Cougars hold off Thunderbirds to keep 2 game lead in Jayhawk West

Cougars hold off Thunderbirds to keep 2 game lead in Jayhawk West
The Barton Community College men's basketball team continued to set the pace in the Jayhawk West with a 92-86 win over Cloud County Monday night at the Barton Gym. The Cougars built a huge lead in the contest that proved to be just enough to withstand a furious Cloud rally. Barton improved to 8-1 in the West – a full 2 games ahead of 2nd place Butler and 2 1/2 ahead of Garden City. The 10th ranked Cougars are now 21-2 on the season. Cloud fell to 4-5 in the West and 15-8 overall. Barton will be back home Wednesday for another big battle against defending Region VI champion Seward in West play.

Highlights
Barton played one of its best 20 minutes of the season in the opening half, taking a 22-point lead to the locker room. The Cougars hit 19-of-33 shots in the opening half in building a 56-34 lead. Barton connected on 8-of-18 3-pointers, 11-of-15 shots inside the arc and 10-of-11 free throws during the offensive display. The Cougars also outrebounded Cloud 21-7 in the half. Of  Barton's 15 misses during the half, the Cougars grabbed their own rebound 11 times, converting them into 18 points.

Chip Steven nailed 5 3-pointers in the half as he and Corey Bingham both had double figure points at the half with 15 and 12. The one positive for the Thunderbirds during those 20 minutes was a 54 percent shooting effort themselves to keep the game as close as it was. In the 2nd minutes, the T-Birds would continued to blister the nets at a 54 percent pace, but this time getting more opportunities as Cloud won the rebounding battle 21-15 in the 2nd stanza and Barton cooled to just 42 percent from the field and hit just 1 3-pointer.

The lead reached its peak of 25 when Cornelius Brown scored on an assist from Josh Martin just 2 minutes into the half for a 61-36 Barton lead. From that point on, Cloud chipped away at the Cougars. The T-Birds got it under 20 with 16 minutes (63-45) and down to 15 with 8 minutes to play (76-61). Cloud got it to 10 points at 80-70 with just more than 5 minutes to play in the game but it didn't get to single digits until 3 minutes remained. But things got really tight when the Thunderbirds scored a basketball and free throw with 1:55 to play to cut the Barton lead to 88-84. After a Corey Bingham 1-of-2 effort at the free throw line, the T-Birds had a chance to get it even closer – 3 chances in fact. Cloud grabbed a pair of offensive rebounds in the possession and got off a pair of 3-pointers but all caromed off and the Cougars' Marcus Butler finally grabbed the rebound with 1 minute to play. Cloud would not get it the lead back to 4 points until just 10 seconds remained as Barton held on for the win.

Steven and Bingham both netted career-highs in the win with Steven finishing with 22 points on 5-of-10 3-point shooting. Bingham added 21 thanks to 11-of-15 free throw shooting. Both eclipsed their previous high by a single point. Nyika Williams recorded his 2nd double-double in 3 games and 5th of the season with 10 points and 10 rebounds. Williams added 4 blocks as well. Brown ended with 13 points. Bingham paced the Cougars with 7 assists and a pair of steals. Chris White-Ready led all scorers with 29 and teammate Eric Marshall added 28 to pace Cloud.

Barton will look to keep its perfect mark at home this season in tact (11-0) with another contest Wednesday night against the defending Region VI Champion and 3rd place finisher at the NJCAA last year. Seward is coming off a 26-point win over West preseason favorite Hutchinson. The Saints rolled to the 82-58 win over the Blue Dragons in Liberal Monday. Seward is 4-5 in the West and 17-6 overall.

Stats
Stats can be found at www.bartonccc.edu/sports

Next
Feb 4 – v Seward 8 pm (Jayhawk West contest at the Barton Gym in Great Bend)