Cougars make it 2 straight West wins with road win at Butler

Cougars make it 2 straight West wins with road win at Butler
The Barton County Community College men's basketball team appears to be gathering itself from a tough beginning of January. The Cougars made it 2 straight West wins and earned their 1st West road win of the year with a 65-56 win over Butler County Wednesday night in El Dorado. The Cougars are now 2-2 in the West and 7-11 overall Butler falls to 0-4 and 11-7. Barton will look for its 3rd straight win Saturday when the Cougars travel to Hutch to take on the Blue Dragons in the Sports Arena.

Highlights
Once again shooting accuracy and winning go hand-in-hand with the Cougars this season. Barton hit better than 50 percent from the floor for the for the only the 4th time – their 2nd straight West game – and are now 4-0 in those games. This time the Cougars knocked down 52 percent of their shots, hitting 27-of-52 field goal attempts. Barton also hit 6-of-12 3-pointers during the contest including two big treys late in the game.

A 16-4 run in the 1st half gave Barton a 26-14 lead with 3 minutes left in the half and the Cougars took that double digit lead to the locker room at 32-21. Barton quickly made it 34-21 to start the 2nd half before the Grizzlies responded. Butler cut the lead all the way down to 47-45 when AJ Calvin scored at the 6:21 mark. The Cougars were clinging to a precarious 53-50 lead with just less than 4 minutes to play when sophomore point guard Aubrey Bruner stepped up.

Bruner scored 7 points for Barton during a 12-3 run to put the game away. It started with a 3-pointer at the 3:20 mark on a pass from Marcus Barrett to give Barton a 56-53 lead. After Butler answered with a Bryan Ross trey, it was Scott Elliott's turn to knock down a 3-pointer. Elliott hit his trey with 2:34 to play – off another assist from Barrett – to give Barton a 59-53 lead and spark a 9-0 run. The next two buckets would be Bruner layups off of steals. The 1st came off a steal from Calvin and the 2nd on a steal from Kevin Menifee. The 2nd of those gave Barton a 63-53 with 1:24 to play. The Cougar pushed it 65-53 as Antanas Kavaliauskas capped the run with a tip-in for his 10th double-double of the season.

Kavaliauskas ended the night with 14 points and 10 rebounds. Bruner ended the contest with 12 and Elliott 10. Menifee scored 22 for Butler to lead all scorers and Calvin ended with 13 points and 13 boards. Ross added 11 on 3-of-8 shooting from behind the arc.

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

Next
Sat., Jan 22 – at Hutchinson, 8 pm (Jayhawk West contest at the Sports Arena)

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