Barton opens Jayhawk West season with win at Cloud
The Barton Community College men's basketball team earned a big win to start the Jayhawk West season, defeating Cloud County 84-68 in Concordia Saturday night. The Cougars opened with the big road win over a team that had been ranked earlier in the season and was receiving votes in the latest NJCAA poll in the Thunderbirds home gym. Barton's win at Arley Bryant Gym was the 1st time the Cougars had won there in 3 years and only 2nd time in the past 5 seasons. Barton improves to 14-1 on the season with the win while Cloud falls to 11-4. Things don't get any easier for Barton as they travel to No. 15 Seward County Wednesday to take on the 13-2 Saints, who are coming off a loss at Hutchinson to start West play.

Highlights
The Cougars got out of the gates quickly with a 21-8 lead just 6 minutes into the contest. Barton hit 5 3's in the opening 6 minutes to jump to that 13-point lead. Josh Martin hit a pair of treys early in the run while Corey Bingham ended the run with 2 3's of his own. The Cougars never trailed after that but Cloud certainly did not go lightly. Barton did hold a double digit lead most of the opening 20 minutes of action.

To start the 2nd half, however, Cloud had a run in them. Trailing 43-31 at intermission, the Thunderbirds started the 2nd half with a 9-2 run to cut the margin to 45-40. But following a Cougar timeout, Barton set up a play for an easy score from Cornelius Brown. Barton was able to push the lead back to 10 at 50-40 following a 3 from Marcus Butler. Cloud continued to hang around, though, trailing just 67-60 with 7:38 to play. But a 7-2 Barton run gave the Cougars a 76-62 lead with 5 minutes to play following a Chip Steven 3-pointer and Cloud never got closer than double digits the rest of the way.

Bingham led Barton with 16 points off the bench followed by Taaj Ridley with 14 and Martin with 11. Cornelius Brown added 9 points and 9 rebounds off the bench as well as the Cougar bench outscored the Cloud bench 41-16. Martin finished the game with 5 assists and Bingham added 3. Matt Simmons grabbed 8 rebounds. The Cougars hit 12-of-27 3-pointers and continue to knock down better than 38 percent of its long range shots on the season. Cloud was led by Adrian Herrera with 13 while the 3rd leading scorer in the West Jemal Farmer was limited to just 11 points – 10 off his average – and hit just 2-of-10 from the floor.

Barton's task doesn't get any easier as the Cougars brutal back-to-back road start at Cloud and Seward winds up Wednesday in Liberal. Seward lost a tough 76-69 contest at the Sports Arena in Hutchinson to start West play. The Cougars won in Liberal last year for its 1st win at the Green House in 4 years. The Saints only losses this year have been its last 2 games to No. 18 Southern Idaho and the West opener at Hutch.

Stats
Stats can be found at www.bartonccc.edu/sports

Next
Jan 7 – at Seward 8 pm (Jayhawk West contest at the Greenhouse in Liberal)

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