In a tale of two halves, the Barton Community College men's basketball team came to a crushing end Friday evening as the hot shooting Cowley College Tigers owned the final twenty minutes at Friend University for a 104-77 victory.
The 3rd seeded Cougars' season ends at 16-9 with the top seeded Tigers' eleventh straight win takes the 15th ranked squad into Saturday's title game at 20-4.
Despite trailing by as many twelve midway through the first half action, the Cougars climbed back in it to an eventual 53-all tie despite committing sixteen turnovers. Second half play went south with the Tigers outscoring Barton 51-27 earning the win.
Barton owned most of the final nine minutes of the opening twenty minutes, outscoring the Tigers by eleven including a stretch of 13-4 in claiming its lone lead of 48-47 with 2:31 to play. Cowley fired back with one of its 15 made three-pointers of the night to reclaim the lead with Evans Kipruto's late flush of Jaheim Holden's pass taking the teams to the locker room gridlocked at 53.
After shooting 63% from the field in first half action, the Cougars shot just 24% in the final twenty minutes and added thirteen more turnovers while Cowley heated up to 60% from the field including draining eight behind the arc.
A 12-0 start to the final frame buried the Cougars in a hole with another quick six points pushing the lead to seventeen as less than five minutes clicked off the clock.
The Cougars fought back to cut the margin to fourteen twice in the next four minutes but a Cowley 9-0 run pushed the margin over the twenty-point mark and all but took any wind out of the Barton sail.
Kipruto led Barton's four double-digit scorers with 24 points on 10-of-11 from the field. Just Harmon added 12 points, four assists, and team leading nine rebounds helping the Cougars' outboard the Tigers by one. Holden led with five assists in scoring 10 points as did Shawn Warrior, with Desean Munson finishing with five points and seven rebounds.
The Tigers placed all five starters in double figures, led by Mike'l Henderson's 23 points. Dalen Ridgnal was close behind with 22 points, Cevin Clark adding 19, and Shemarri Allen and Moun'tae Edmundson contributing 15 and 14 points respectively.