A night of season highs and lows on each end of court Monday at the Barton Gym was not in favor of the Barton Community College men's basketball team as the Cougars took an 85-65 drubbing to 16th ranked Colby Community College.
The pivotal Jayhawk West battle of the top two teams sinks Barton two games behind Colby in the conference standings at 12-5 and 20-6 on the year while Colby's first series sweep since the 2003-04 season improves the Trojans to 14-3 and 22-4 on the year.
Barton has a two-game road stretch ahead, beginning with an 8:30 p.m. tip Wednesday at Northwest Kansas Technical College before Saturday's trip to Seward County Community College.
The Cougars held a pair of early leads, climbing back from a five point hole midway through the opening frame to take its final lead at 26-25 on Justin Harmon and Diovonte Caldwell buckets with 3:08 left. Colby put the cap on their 51.7% first half shooting with seven straight to end the first twenty minutes to enjoy a 39-31 advantage to halftime.
Despite making just 8-of-30 shots for a 26.7% shooting in the first frame, the Cougars were still in the game, rattling off five straight cutting the deficit to 41-36 with 17:33 to play but it was as close as the gap would be the rest of the way.
The Region VI leaders in shooting simply had one of those nights against the Trojan's second ranked scoring defense, shooting just 38% in the final twenty minutes to finish with a season low 32.8% overall.
Colby on the other hand, torched the Barton defense for nearly 60% in the second half, building the lead out to twenty-eight with just under six minutes to play in recording 55.4% for the highest percentage against the Cougars all year.
Harmon's fifteen points and seven rebounds off the bench led just three players in double-digits as Keandre Bowles and Caldwell each added twelve.
Demarcus Sharp took high point honors with twenty-seven while dishing out a team high five assists and four steals. Eddie Davis scored nineteen with Alexandre Fanchini and Domonic Harvey contributing thirteen and twelve respectively. Javion May grabbed a game high eleven rebounds to help the Trojans to a three rebound advantage despite the Cougars grabbing seven more offensive rebounds.