Saturday evening's matchup of the top two Jayhawk West teams went in favor of the home team as the 17th ranked Barton Community College men's basketball team fell short to nationally receiving votes Colby Community College 80-74.
The loss sends Barton to the second spot of the standings at 7-3 on a 15-4 season mark with Colby sliding into the top of the early standings at 7-2 improving to 15-3 on the year.
Next up for Barton is a pair of home contests, the first coming on Wednesday against Northwest Kansas Technical College with surging Seward County Community College coming to the Barton Gym on Saturday. A 7:30 p.m. tip-off slated for each contest.
Barton never led in what could be their final trip to Colby's Community Building, trailing by as much as seven in the opening minutes of the contest and again by ten in the first three minutes of the second half.
Despite being held to twenty points below their region second best scoring output, Barton hung around throughout the night.
Martin Vogts keyed a 7-2 stretch with a pair of assists leading to a Damarcus Morris dunk and Justin Harmon bucket before draining the first of his three treys on the evening to tie it up at fourteen.
Colby rattled off the next five, riding the margin until Diovonte Caldwell and Mavrick Gildyard buckets cut the gap to two. The Trojans answered the four point swing closing out a 28-22 edge to the halftime break as both teams struggled shooting just 33% from the field.
Two of the top scoring teams in the region shook off the first half shooting woes to light it up in second half action, each putting fifty-two points on the scoreboard.
The Trojans began the second frame scoring six of the first eight points to open their largest lead at ten with 16:45 on the clock.
Barton quickly cut the gap down to a manageable four points behind Gildyard and Jaheim Holden buckets, with Caldwell capping the 6-0 run thirty seconds later.
Following an exchange of a pair of deep shots from Caldwell and Colby's Alexandre Fanchini, Holden converted an And-1 with the next possession Morris' tip-in on a Holden miss drew the Cougars within 44-43 with 12:30 to play.
Barton could never take the lead but did tie it later at 58 with 5:50 left behind an 11-3 spurt. Morris came up with another tip-in to start an 8-0 run in the stretch, followed by a pair of buckets from Gildyard before getting the game tying shot from Caldwell.
A story of the night was the missed opportunities, a charge call on the next possession was one of those, but instead it turned the tide for the Trojans scoring the next seven for a 65-58 lead with three minutes left.
Again Barton would hang around the chicken coop, a Harmon hoop-n-harm cut the gap to three with two minutes with Vogts' third trey of the night drawing Barton to within 68-66 with 1:11 remaining.
Knocking down 6-of-11 from beyond the arc, Fanchini delivered the dagger on the Trojans' next trip down the court burying the final trey in all but killing Barton's momentum.
Nine Cougars reached the scoring column with three hitting double figures. Caldwell and Holden, who fouled out with 2:13 to play, led the team with thirteen points each with Gildyard providing a big push off the bench with his first collegiate double-double performance of twelve points and ten rebounds.
Fanchini led all players with twenty-four on the night with Demarcus Sharp adding eighteen while Matt McFarlane and Javion May contributing thirteen and eleven respectively.