The Barton Community College women's basketball team got off to a strong start Wednesday evening at the Barton Gym, distributing the wealth up and down the lineup in cruising 73-38 over Northwest Kansas Technical College.
Improving to 7-4 for third place of the conference standings, Barton ups their season mark to 11-9 while dropping the Mavericks to 3-8 in league play and 7-12 overall.
Next up for the Cougars is Saturday's 5:30 p.m. hosting of 12th ranked Seward County Community College as the Saints bring an eight game win streak to the Barton Gym and a West unblemished 11-0 mark and 16-3 overall record.
Coming off a disappointing performance on the road this past Saturday, the Cougars scored the first four points before controlling the remaining five minutes of the opening period in building a 16-3 lead.
Consecutive three-pointers from Tiffany Dortland followed Hannah Valentine's steal leading to Richelle Turney's pass to Vanessa Oduah put the Cougars over the twenty point advantage just 2:37 into the second frame. The margin slipped to fifteen a minute later after Josie Cook and Zantasia White treys but it would be as close as the Mavericks would get the rest of the game as Oduah's triple at the buzzer sent the teams to the halftime break with Barton up 41-15.
D'Shonda Hunt, who scored ten points and grabbed six rebounds in the first half, added seven more in the third period's opening 4:23 leading an 11-0 run out of the locker room. Two minutes later Dortland buried her third long ball of the evening widening the gap to forty with Queen Ulabo's triple late in the period pushed the score to 62-24 headed into the final frame.
Barton's largest lead came with 4:16 to play behind Paige Talbott's lone three-pointer of the night with Ivana Branzovski knocking down her fourth shot beyond the arc of the season to close out Barton's scoring with 1:12 remaining.
Ten Cougars hit the scoring column being led by the double-double performance of Hunt, scoring a career high seventeen points and hauling down ten rebounds. Posting her third such double feat of the year, Hunt remains hot on the scoresheet in reaching double figures in six of the past seven games. Ulabo added thirteen points with seven rebounds while leading the team with four blocks and three steals.
Leading the Mavericks scoring was White's fifteen points behind 3-of-9 from deep with Yverline Da Silva next on the scoresheet with seven points and a team leading eight rebounds.