For the second meeting this season the victor wasn't decided until a fifth set and again the win fell on the side of the Cougars as the Barton Community College volleyball team held on for a 3-2 victory Monday night at the Barton Gym over Hutchinson Community College 19-25, 25-20, 25-21, 17-25, and 15-13.
The third straight victory keeps Barton's hopes of a second seed out of the Jayhawk West alive, remaining a half game behind Colby at 11-3 in conference and 21-11 overall. Hutchinson ends the regular season locked into the fourth spot at 9-7 and 13-18 on the year.
Having broken an eight year drought at the Sports Arena back on September, the Cougars snapped another streak as the season sweep was also the first since 2011, coincidentally the same year as current Hutchinson coach Patrick Hall guided Barton to its last Region VI crown.
Barton has two remaining regular season matches, a Wednesday trip to current sixth place Independence Community College (6-9, 11-18), before turning sights on Friday's "Sophomore Night" hosting current seventh place Garden City Community College (4-10, 7-26). Garden City hosts Colby on Wednesday, a match the Cougars will await the results in helping determine Barton's final Region VI seeding.
Hutchinson won the first and fourth sets behind big spurts of points in burying the Cougars into deep holes. In the opener, the Blue Dragons tallied ten unanswered in building a 10-1 lead. Barton was able to claw back to close within three at 14-11 but Hutchinson answered with four of the next five to push the gap back out to the final margin of six.
Barton got hot in the next two frames, hitting .375 and .387 respectively to take a 2-1 match lead.
The Cougars took the second set lead at 5-4 and held a 15-10 advantage before Hutchinson outscored Barton 9-3 to flip the scrip to a 19-18 score in favor of the visitors. Barton grabbed the lead back with a pair of points but with the next point going to Hutchinson to tie it up at 20, the Cougars got some timely blocks by the front line and selfishly took the remaining five points to even up the match.
The third set seesawed to an 11-all tie until three straight keyed a spurt having the Cougars on top 19-13. Hutchinson took six of the next eight to draw within two but a critical trio of Barton tallies busted open the set in the four point win.
After hitting for just .190 in the first set, the fourth set was even worse as Barton recorded just nine kills and eight attack errors for a whopping .036 percentage.
Trailing 6-5, Hutchinson took the next eight points as Barton struggled for answers the entire set in never recovering.
In the deciding fifth, Barton held an early 6-4 after an Eduarda Souza kill but Hutchinson responded with the next three points. The Cougars grabbed the next two to go ahead, but after trading points, Hutchinson's pair of tallies put the Blue Dragons back in front at 10-9. With a raucous home crowd of support, Barton strung a trio of points capped by a long rally in prompting a Hutchinson timeout. The Blue Dragons won the next point out of the break to close the gap to one only to have Barton get to match point by seizing the next two. It would take two more attempts to close out the match as Hutchinson strung together a pair of points but Migle Mazurkeviciute put a cap on the night banging an attack off the Blue Dragons front line to fall beyond reach on the end line securing the match victory.
Setter Agnieska Paskevic had a big night in keying Barton's .268 attack percentage, recording a career high 57 assists as the sophomore moved past Carolina Goncalves' 2016 mark into 15th best single season performance. Now with 1071 assists on the year, Paskevic's next hurdle on the chart is Meghan Robbins' 1096 assists set in the 1995 season.
Rayanne de Oliveira and Mazurkeviciute led the squad with 19 and 16 kills respectively, with Oliveira protecting the net with eight blocks while Mazurkeviciute helped guard the back third of the court with fourteen digs in recording her 14th double-double of the year.
Like Paskevic, Mazurkeviciute also moved into program top-15 standing as the sophomore's kill totals account for 697 in her two-year career, two away from Barton Hall of Famer Trish Gadberry's 14th mark set after her 1985 and 1986 season were totaled.
Karina de Oliveira helped solidify her second place single season and career dig totals, adding another 37 from the night to draw within 126 on the single season chart and 298 on the career achievement list.