Cougar men roll to win over Seward, 83-66
The Barton County Community College men's basketball team jumped out to a big lead, lost that lead, then rallied for a 83-66 win over Seward County Wednesday night at the Barton County Gym in Jayhawk West play. The Cougars made it 3 in a row at home with the win and improved to 4-4 at the halfway point of the Jayhawk West race. Barton is 9-13 overall. Seward County fell to 5-3 in the West and 16-6 overall on the season. Barton will travel to Pratt Saturday for West play at 8 pm.

Highlights
The Cougars dominated the early stages of the game and still held a double digit lead at the intermission, 46-36. During the opening half, Barton led by as many as 22 during that opening half as Barton shot 67 percent from the floor.

The Saints come out to start the 2nd half on fire and nearly caught Barton in hardly no time. Seward cut the lead to 50-48 less than 4 minutes into the contest and eventually overtook the Cougars at 54-53 with 11 minutes to play. Seward's lead would grow to 58-54 with 10:19 to play. But Barton would not go quietly into the night. Antanas Kavaliauskas scored 6 and Aubrey Bruner added 3 during 12-2 run that put the Cougars on top 66-60 with 6 minutes to play. The Cougars would not trail again.

Seward scored just 8 points the final 10 minutes of the contest as the Cougars pulled away for the win. Barton shot a season-high 57 percent from the floor and out-rebounded the Saints by a 43-23 margin.

Barton was led by Kavaliauskas with his 11th double-double this year, scoring 29 points and grabbing 15 rebounds. The 29 points is a career high for the sophomore from Lithuania. He was joined in double figures Diogo Salazar. Salazar, who has become a force of late for Barton, just missed a double-double himself, scoring 12 points and grabbing 9 boards. Bruner scored 14 and handed out 4 assists. Keoni Watson led Seward with 16 and Kyle Smith added 11.

Stats
Full box scores and stats can be found at www.bartonccc.edu/sports

Next
Sat., Feb. 5 – at Pratt, 8 pm (Jayhawk West contest at the Beaver Dome in Pratt)

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Check out Barton County Basketball Online at www.bartonccc.edu/sports