The Barton Community College men's basketball team needed a late scoring stretch to pull away Saturday evening for a 90-76 victory over a pesky Monroe College squad to conclude the 2019 Best Western Angus Inn/Cougar Booster Club Basketball Classic held over the weekend at the Barton Gym.
The Cougars improve to 6-1 on the season while the Mustangs suffer their second consecutive loss in dipping to 2-2 on the season. Barton will have the week away from action before traveling to Council Bluffs, Iowa, for the weekend's Holiday Inn/Hampton Inn Reiver Classic. Barton's first game comes Friday afternoon in a 3:00 p.m. tilt against conference foe Cloud County Community College in a non-conference tilt before taking on host school Iowa Western Community College in the Saturday feature 7:00 p.m. tip.
Monroe led twice throughout the opening 1:37 until Barton got cranking on an 8-0 run to flip the script as four different Cougars hit the scoring column for an eventual 19-11 edge at the media timeout. Stretching the lead to its largest of the half at eleven following Justin Harmon's 1-for-2 trip from the line, Monroe fired back to close on a 13-6 stretch to cut the margin to four into the locker rooms.
With the gap shrinking to within a possession twice early in the second frame, Barton answered back each time to eventually stretch the margin back out to double-digits on Mavrick Gildyard's layup with 12:35 to play.
Monroe hung around the coup as the pesky Mustangs trimmed the deficit to a two possession ballgame four different times midway through the second half, but the Cougars held off the charge each time.
Getting late in the game, the Cougars got the final surge they needed in Desean Munson's rim bender helping to spark a 6-0 run followed by Jaheim Holden's lone triple of the evening blowing the lead out to double-digits with 3:44 to play.
The Cougars held off any potential threat for a Mustang comeback, ballooning the lead out to sixteen in the final minute in capturing its third straight win of the season.
Harmon posted a new collegiate high, notching his seventh straight double-figure performance to begin his freshman campaign, finishing with a game high of twenty-one points converting 12-of-16 from the charity strip along with pulling down a team high tying seven boards and dishing out a team high seven dimes.
Making his second start of the season, Anthony Atkinson-Enneking also posted a career high powered by 8-of-10 shooting for seventeen points, to go along with matching Harmon with seven boards.
Gildyard led the Barton bench production with sixteen points as Munson closed out the double-digit scorers with eleven.
The Mustangs were led by Zion Styles nineteen points on 8-of-15 shooting. Jeremiah Kendall posted the lone double-double of the game scoring sixteen to go along with his game high eleven boards leading Monroe to a twelve rebound advantage. Akeem Tate led the bench spark in adding twelve points.
In men's action earlier in the day, 7th ranked Hutchinson Community College remained unbeaten on the season at 7-0, rallying from a two point halftime deficit in a twenty-three point final frame difference in rolling past Iowa Western Community College 91-70.