Barton wins road game at No. 14 Northeastern
The Barton County Community College men’s basketball team is quickly learning how to be road warriors. After playing its first two home games of the season this past weekend, the Cougars returned to the road for 2 more games in 3 days starting with a trip to Sterling, Colorado to take on 14th ranked Northeastern Junior College Monday. Barton left town with a victory over the ranked foe, earning a 77-75 win. The win improves the Cougars to 5-2 and runs their winning streak to 4 games. Northeastern fell to 4-2 for the season.
Barton wins road game at No. 14 Northeastern
The Barton County Community College men's basketball team is quickly learning how to be road warriors. After playing its first two home games of the season this past weekend, the Cougars returned to the road for 2 more games in 3 days starting with a trip to Sterling, Colorado to take on 14th ranked Northeastern Junior College Monday. Barton left town with a victory over the ranked foe, earning a 77-75 win. The win improves the Cougars to 5-2 and runs their winning streak to 4 games. Northeastern fell to 4-2 for the season.
Highlights
The Cougars didn't get out of the gates very well, falling behind 7-0. They would spend much of the remainder of the game trying to catch the Plainsmen. The Cougars trimmed the lead to 2 points on a number of occasions midway through the first half but a late run by Northeastern pushed the lead as high as 12 points at 33-21. The Cougars trailed 37-29 at the half.
The second half, however, was an entirely different story. Barton cut the lead to 41-40 on a layup by J.P. Batista off a feed from Aubrey Bruner. The points were just two of a career-high 32 scored by the sophomore from Brazil. Barton finally drew even with NJC when Justin Rose hit a pair of free throws with just under 15 minutes to play.
The home-standing Plainsmen responded by putting together a 20-13 run to put them back up by 7 at 64-57 with 10 minutes to play in the contest. Again the Cougar would whittle away at the lead tying on a Tyler Luke putback and finally overtaking NJC for the first time all night when Batista made 1-of-2 free throws with 4:09 to play for a 72-71 lead. Barton trailed just one more time in the game but didn't put it on ice until the final seconds.
A Bruner turnover, the first of the night for the freshman point guard, gave NJC the ball back with 33 seconds to play down 77-75. But a missed 3-pointer by John DeGroat, a University of Pittsburgh signee, followed by an NJC turnover gave the Cougars the ball back and eventually sent Joel Hannagan to the free throw line with 2 seconds left. Hannagan missed the charity toss by Luke grabbed the offensive board to seal the win for Barton.
The 2nd half numbers for Barton County were very impressive. Barton committed just 4 turnovers the entire 2nd half. The Cougars hit 19-of-32 shots from the floor for 59 percent of which Barton recorded 15 assists on. Barton also limited NJC to just 14 field goals in the half.
In addition to Batista's career-high effort of 32 points, he grabbed 11 rebounds for his 2nd double-double of the season. Rose added 14 points while Luke just missed his 2nd double-double with 9 points and 9 rebounds, including the game-clincher.
Stats
Stats can be found at www.bartonccc.edu/sports
Next
Nov. 19 – at Labette, 7 pm (at Parsons, Kan.)
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Check out Barton County Men's Basketball Online at www.bartonccc.edu/sports