The Barton Community College men's basketball team faltered in second half play Sunday afternoon resulting in a 90-77 loss at Garden City Community College to conclude the regular season.
Seeded as the third team out of the Jayhawk West at 14-7, Barton drops to 23-7 on the season while Garden City finishes alone in the fifth spot at 8-13 and 13-17 overall.
Barton will need to snap its two game slide if it wants to extend the season as the Cougars begin postseason play on Wednesday hosting Neosho County Community College (8-12, 15-15). Following the women's contest also against the Panthers, the Cougars' tip-off expected for 7:30 p.m. with free admission for the doubleheader and reserved parking passes still honored for the night.
Leondre Washington opened his big scoring night with a three-pointer but things went south for the next five minutes as Garden City outscored the Cougars 19-2 in building a fourteen point lead.
Martin Vogts' first of three triples on the night halted the Broncbuster's 9-0 run in the stretch, adding another bucket closing Barton to within twelve. Following Garden City's fourth three-pointer in the first eight minutes, Barton outscored the Broncbusters by twelve in the next six minutes including six straight from Akeem White to draw within two with 4:25 left. Garden City surged back out in front by five but a pair of Washington free throws and John Williams' three-pointer would tie the game 32-all at the break.
Vogts knocked down his second long ball ninety seconds into the second frame after Garden City had begun the half with four of their twenty-five made charity tosses on the night.
Garden City widened their lead on an 8-0 spurt, halted temporarily by a Washington jumper before Jamir Thomas buried his second trey of the half pushing the lead to ten with fifteen minutes remaining.
The margin hovered around double digits for the next ten minutes until Garden City buried the Cougars in a seventeen point hole with four straight out of a timeout on consecutive transition buckets.
The Cougars had a final run in them responding to the deficit with ten straight, eight coming from Washington's eight points including consecutive three pointers. Washington buried another, concluding his 6-of-12 from deep night, but the Cougars missed a couple of wide open treys along with a couple of other bad possessions in coming up shy of slicing the lead any closer than eight.
Washington finished with twenty-five points with Elijah Ford adding eighteen while White and Vogts added twelve and eleven respectively coming off the bench.
Five players reached double figures for the Broncbusters led by Thomas' double-double of twenty-three and eleven rebounds. Chekih Kebe added eight rebounds helping Garden City control the boards by a twenty rebound margin while also adding thirteen points. RJ Pair and Russhard Cruikshank each added twelve with ten coming off the bench from Tony Hopkins.
