Getting off to a better start out of the locker room than its previous two games, the Barton Community College women's basketball team controlled most of Monday night's Jayhawk West opener from the defensive end for a 61-52 win at Pratt Community College.
The third straight victory improves Barton to 5-3 in conference play and 9-8 on the season as the four straight win at the Dennis Lesh Sports Arena and seventh in the series drops Pratt to 5-2 in the West and 11-5 overall.
Spending the last two games on the road, Barton returns for a home contest on Wednesday hosting Dodge City Community College in a 5:30 p.m. at the Barton Gym.
On a night where Barton's leading scorer Richelle Turney scored just two points leading to the squad's fourth lowest output of the season, Turney and her defensive mates held Pratt to nearly twenty points below their average in chalking up the Lady Cougars' most stiff effort of point denial.
Barton found themselves down six a pair of times early before finding their stride defensively and sinking a perfect six straight free throws in closing the opening quarter on a 6-1 stretch trailing just 13-12.
Following a Pratt bucket to open the second frame, Vanessa Oduah's five straight including the first of her pair of triples on the night provided the Lady Cougars' first lead of the game coming at 1:10 into the quarter.
Pratt answered the bucket to tie it up at 17 in not only the Beavers' last points of the quarter but the final gridlock. Barton controlled the final eight minutes on both ends of the floor and scoring the remaining eleven points for a 16-4 quarter difference to ride a 28-17 halftime lead.
The margin shrunk to seven twice in the third quarter, each time Oduah either dished out a Barton bucket or converted on one for the answer including setting up Tiffany Dortland's triple and launching long ball herself increasing the margin back out to 13 with 3:52 remaining.
Barton took an eleven point margin into the fourth, quickly building the lead to fifteen following KayCee Miller's jumper and Dortland's second triple. Another five point spurt on Queen Ulabo's layup and D'Shonda Hunt's And-1 conversion set up by Oduah's penetration dish expanded the gap to sixteen with under six to play. The Lady Cougars enjoyed the big lead until late in the game when Pratt scored seven of the final nine points in closing the final margin to single digits.
Oduah's double-double performance of seventeen points and ten rebounds to go along with five steals led three Lady Cougars to reach the double-digit scoring column as Hunt finished with twelve and Hannah Valentine came off the bench for ten.
Pratt also had three in double figures with Janell Douvier leading the way with fourteen to go along with eight rebounds. Dymond McElrath added twelve with Jordan Mathis contributing eleven while Tytiana Haamid corralled eleven rebounds for game high honors.