A fiery start for the Barton Community College men's basketball team would slowly lead to a gut wrenching 79-71 defeat to Pratt Community College Wednesday night inside the Barton Gym.
The loss moves the Cougars to second place in the Jayhawk West standings at 11-4, dropping to 19-5 overall, while the Beavers sweep the season series to move into third place at 9-6 and 15-9 overall.
Barton will look to flip the script with a road trip to Dodge City Community College on Saturday afternoon in a 3:00 p.m. tip at the Student Activities Center.
Falling behind by two in the opening two minutes, the Cougars were the beneficiary of three straight Martin Vogts triples in a span of 1:10, fueling a 9-2 run putting the home squad up 10-5 just five minutes into the contest. Barton lengthened the lead to its' largest of the contest at 22-15 with 10:10 to play in the opening stanza during a 9-0 spurt sparked by a pair of Jaheim Holden buckets including one of his two three pointers on the evening.
The tide changed just two minutes later as the Beavers dialed up three of their nine opening frame trifectas for a 9-2 run knotting the contest up at 24 all at the media timeout. The Cougars would grab the lead two more times following buckets by Justin Harmon and Keandre Bowles but nine straight from Pratt including a long three pointer by Deontae Davis put the Beavers in front for good with 4:16 remaining. Trimming the margin to two late in the opening half, the Beavers outside shooting once again buried the Cougars into an eight point halftime deficit following Zool Kueth's third and fourth triples of the opening half.
Four nights after setting a school record from the field, the hot shooting Cougars cooled down in the second half shooting 9-for-36 for a frigid 25.0%. Unable to find much of a rhythm on offense, Barton relied heavily on free throw shooting as the Cougars got to the line twenty four times in the final twenty minutes going 18-of-24 to remain within striking distance. Following a Caldwell layup trimming the deficit to one the woes on offense continued to linger as the Cougars went 0-for-9 over the final 5:58. The Beavers would hold off any Barton comeback scoring the final six points earning the season sweep 79-71.
Four Cougars reached double-figure scoring as Caldwell tallied a team high eighteen points on 6-of-12 shooting from the field. Bowles the reigning KJCCC Player of the Week added fourteen with Holden accounting for thirteen. Vogts added eleven coming off the bench to go along with his team high four assists. Mavrick Gildyard hauled down a team high ten rebounds finishing just two points shy of his second double-double.
Kueth's 7-of-15 shooting from the floor finished with a game high twenty-one points. Jamel Horton added a seventeen point performance off the bench while Davis tallied all fifteen points from behind the arch finishing 5-of-8 with Julian Eziukwu rounding out the double figure scoring for the Beavers with a double-double performance of ten points and game high eleven rebounds.