Adjusting to playing without the squad's leading scorer, the Barton Community College women's basketball team used a big second half Wednesday evening for a 65-52 victory over Cloud County Community College advancing to the quarterfinal round of the Region VI playoffs.
The 6th seeded Cougars improve to 16-15 on the year earning a trip to Dodge City's United Wireless Arena for a Saturday 5:00 p.m. contest versus Coffeyville Community College as the 3rd seeded Ravens also took care of business at home 79-65 to end 14th seeded Garden City's season. 11th seeded Cloud County has their 2019-20 campaign come to a close at 9-22. The winner of the Barton-Coffeyville matchup will then advance to Monday's 1:00 p.m. semifinal against the victor of top seeded Butler Community College and 9th seeded Neosho County Community College.
Playing without leading scorer Richelle Turney due to illness, it took the Cougar offense four minutes to net their first field goal on freshman Vanessa Oduah's old fashioned play conversion. Trailing all quarter, Barton managed just three field goals as the T-Birds led 15-11 after the opening ten minutes
The Cougars stayed in the game on near perfect free throw shooting in the second frame, sinking 9-of-10 tosses. A 13-4 run capped by an Oduah bucket gave Barton its' first lead of the contest with 4:01 left at 24-22 but Cloud County scored seven of the final nine points taking a 29-26 lead into the locker room.
Trailing by six just twenty-five ticks into the third stanza, the Barton offense began heating up rattling off nine straight to regain a 35-32 lead including six from sophomore D'Shonda Hunt and a Tiffany Dortland trifecta. Sophomore Kolby Davis converted an old fashion three-point play putting Barton in front, piecing together a 7-2 spurt to close the quarter taking a 45-42 lead into the fourth.
Cloud County would take their final lead of the contest scoring the opening four points of the final frame but buckets from Oduah and Ulabo started a 10-0 Barton run capped on consecutive Dortland triples increasing the margin to eleven at 55-46. The Cougars held firm down the stretch outscoring the visitors 10-4 in pulling away 65-52.
Shooting 76.8% from the charity stripe, the Cougars outscored the T-Birds by seventeen with another eight point difference in points off turnovers and a twelve point edge in the paint.
Four of the five Cougar starters reached double-figures as Oduah finished with a game high 21 points, just one shy of her career high set back in the previous meeting against the T-Birds. Making just her second career start in place of Turney, Dortland added thirteen points behind three big momentum swinging drops from behind the arc. Ulabo posted her second consecutive and seventh double-double of the season, grabbing a game high eleven rebounds to go along with twelve points. Playing in her final game at the Barton Gym, Hunt added twelve points including 6-for-6 from the free throw line.
A pair of T-Birds finished in double-figures led by Jacy Dalinghaus thirteen points off the bench to go along with a team high eight rebounds. Lydia Ostenson was the lone other Cloud County player to reach double figures in adding eleven points on 4-of-10 shooting.