Cougar baseball wraps up regular season with win, prepare for Region VI playoffs

The Barton Community College baseball team ended the 2012 regular season with a win as they defeated Coffeyville Community College Tuesday afternoon 9-6 at Emporia State University's Glennen Field.  The Cougars, who improve to 31-24 on the season, finished sixth in Region VI play at 10-18.  They will travel to Garden City this weekend to begin Region VI Super Regional play at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday against the Eastern Division's third place team Cowley College.  The Tigers finished their regular season dropping 3-of-4 to Coffeyville earlier in the week and will enter the contest with a 28-24 overall record including a 25-11 mark in region play.  The winner of the Barton-Cowley matchup will play at 1:00 p.m. Sunday against the winner of host Garden City Community College and Labette Community College.  The two matchup losers will play in an elimination game Saturday night at 7:00 p.m. for the right to advance in the double-elimination tournament.  Winners of each of the four Region VI Super Regionals will advance to Wichita for the May 12-14 Region VI Championship.

Highlights
Barton pounded out seventeen hits on the afternoon and received a solid outing from starting pitcher Brett Tunnell.  Striking out the first three batters he faced, Tunnell didn't allow a hit and struck out five overall in his three innings of work.   Alex King and Tanner Carpenter set the stage for the Cougar scoring as the duo combined for six hits from their first and second slots in the lineup.  Carpenter's two-out double in the third inning sparked the Cougars first two runs of the game while King's two-out two-run homerun helped cap a three run fourth inning. On the day six batters had two or more hits, including six for extra bases.