Winning their fourth straight contest, the No. 19 ranked Barton Community College men's basketball team took to the conference road Wednesday night dealing Pratt Community College a 70-59 home floor loss.
Barton improves to 11-4 in the Jayhawk and 20-4 overall becoming the tenth team in Head Coach Craig Fletchall's fourteen seasons to win twenty or more games. Pratt suffers its seventh straight defeat in the series in sliding into a fifth place tie at 4-11 with an 11-13 record on the season.
Next up is Saturday's "Hall of Fame Day" contest hosting Dodge City Community College in an approximate 7:30 p.m. tip-off or twenty minutes following the conclusion of a brief recognition ceremony of the 2019 Induction Class. The four new members of the Hall will be officially inducted earlier in the afternoon at a 2:00 p.m. ceremony in the Kirkman Activity Center, with the recognizing of the recipients taking place immediately following the conclusion of the 5:30 p.m. women's contest.
Trailing 5-4 early on the Dennis Lesh Sports Arena floor, Leondre Washington's three pointer gave Barton a lead it wouldn't relinquish the rest of the night as the Cougars would only allow Pratt to tie it up just twice the rest of the game.
A 9-2 stretch ranging on either side of the first half media timeout gave Barton its largest of the opening frame before the Beavers hung around enough before putting the final four points on the board cutting the gap to four at halftime.
Pratt tacked on four more to begin the second half but Washington's feed to Elijah Ford resulting in a one-handed slam woke the Cougars up from the intermission. Ford added a free throw on Barton's next possession before racking up his then 15th point of the night stretching the lead to five.
The Beavers returned fire in drawing to within one but it would be the last time of being so close. Akeem White and a Washington bucket kept the Beavers at bay before the defense took over to resulting in a pair of White transition buckets. Washington's steal fueled the first lay up while a defensive stop securing a rebound by Diovonte Caldwell and subsequent precision dime to a streaking White pushed the lead to nine. White added a free throw on the next possession to coplet the 8-0 run making it 52-42 wint nine minutes remaining.
Caldwell's bulls-eye from behind the arc followed by White's hanging spinner in the lane gave Barton its largest lead of fourteen with 5:20 remaining.
Pratt upped the tempo in the final five minutes but couldn't get the big shot to fall in getting under single digits as Barton did enough down the stretch to preserve the eleven point victory.
White's third double-double of year led three Cougars in double figures in scoring twenty-one points and hauling down ten rebounds. Ford came up just two rebounds of a third straight double-double in tallying eighteen points to go along with eight rebounds while Washington finished up with thirteen.
Teddy Fifer's sixteen points was the lone Beaver performance to reach double figures as Tyvon Taylor came shy with a nine point night with Blake Furcron and Charles Brown each adding eight points coming off the bench.