Barton rolls to win at No 4 Hutchinson in West play

Barton rolls to win at No 4 Hutchinson in West play

The Barton Community College men's basketball team scored a big road win Thursday night, traveling to Hutchinson and beating the No 4 ranked team in the nation on its home floor. The Cougars never trailed in the game on the way to a 70-63 win over Hutchinson at the Sports Arena. The win was the 2nd straight on the road for the Cougars, now 3-3 in the West and 15-5 overall. Hutch fell to 17-2 and 3-2 with its 2nd straight loss after a 17-0 start. Barton is off until Wednesday when Colby will pay a visit to the Barton Gym for an 8 pm tip off.

Highlights
The game was tied at 2-all and 4-all but the Cougars never trailed the entire 40 minutes of play on the way to the win at the Sports Arena for the 1st time since 2003. It jumbled up even more an already jumbled Jayhawk West race less than halfway through the conference race as preseason favorite Hutch now has a pair of losses.

During the 1st half the Cougars turned the ball over just 3 times on the way to a 32-24 lead at intermission. Barton took control early jumping out to a 6 point lead following a layup from Dwayne Brunson with 13 minutes to play in the half. Hutch cut it to a single point before another quick 5-0 from Barton ended the Blue Dragon threat. The Cougars were able to push that lead to 10 in the final seconds of the half and settled for the 8-point halftime lead behind 17 combined points form bigs Adam Young and Brunson.

Barton kept that lead around the 10-point margin in the 2nd half, leading by 13 points at 48-35 with 10:49 to play. The Blue Dragons whittled away at the lead in small spurts, getting it down to 54-51 with 5 minutes to play in the game when Barton Coach Craig Fletchall called a timeout. Out of that timeout Colin Beatty hit a jumper on an assist from Young then Carl Wallace picked Joe Mitchell's pocket in the back court for a steal and dunk and Barton's lead was 58-51 in a matter of 30 seconds. Barton continued to apply the gas pedal, pushing the lead to 66-55 on a Brunson dunk from Beatty with 1:18 left.  

Four Cougars scored in double figures, led by Beatty and Brunson with 16 each. Brunson added 11 rebounds for his 5th double-double of the season. Young scored 13 for Barton and Storm Sanders added 10 points including an 8-for-8 effort at the free throw line, mostly down the stretch as Hutch was fouling to get back in the game.

Barton gets its bye date in the conference this weekend and will return to action Wednesday when Colby visit. That will begin a stretch of 3 home games in 4 outings for the Cougars who have already played 4 of 6 on the road in the West.  

Stats
Stats can be found was www.bartonsports.com  

Next
Jan 26 – v Colby 8 pm (Jayhawk West game at the Barton Gym in Great Bend)