A pair of five game win streaks came to an end Saturday night at the Barton Gym as the Barton Community College men's basketball team was dropped on their home floor 75-70 to Colby Community College.
The loss not only halted the 28th ranked Cougars five game win streak but also stopped a five game edge over Colby as the Trojans won just their third game in thirty-two outings on Barton's home court. The loss drops Barton to third place in the Jayhawk West and 15-3 overall with Colby closing the gap at 6-4 in league play and 11-8 on the year. Barton's next contest comes Wednesday at Northwest Kansas Technical College for an 8:30 p.m. (CT) tip in Goodland.
Following Elijah Ford's opening dunk from a Leondre Washington lob, Colby owned the next five minutes going on a 17-4 run with Eddie Davis scoring twelve of his eighteen points in the span.
The Cougars countered with a 17-5 stretch of their own, regaining the lead on Akeem White's inside bucket at the 8:01 mark. Washington and Diovonte Caldwell outscored the Trojans by six to put Barton out front by six with under three to play but Colby closed out on a 6-1 run to end the first twenty-minutes in a one-point Barton advantage.
A 10-2 spurt in the first four minutes pushed the Cougars' lead to its largest at nine with Barton seizing all the momentum coming out of the locker room. Colby, however, thought otherwise in unleashing a game-turning eleven straight points to flip the scrip in matter of three minutes, with a pair of Ford free throws momentarily halting the streak, before another four Colby points stretched the lead to three.
Ford would later give Barton its final lead at 54-53 with 8:18 left before Colby buried a trio of critical three point shots in the next four minutes building the lead out to five with 2:28 to play. Ford again tried to bring the Cougars back by cutting the deficit to three but two critical Barton turnovers and a well-executed Colby play for a layup with twenty-two seconds remaining sealed Barton's fate.
Three Cougars reached double-digits with Ford's nineteen leading the way as Washington's 11-of-14 from the charity stripe contributed to sixteen points. White finished with fourteen in a perfect six charity tosses and led the Cougars with seven rebounds.
The Trojans canned ten three-pointers on the night, four coming from Craig Beaudion in scoring a game high twenty-two points. Davis' eighteen was joined by nine rebounds in just missing the double-double while Rian Carter came off the bench to pump in fifteen points in matching Beaudion for game high assist honors with five each.