The Barton Community College men's basketball team shared the wealth Wednesday night as nine of the 11 players seeing the floor reached the scoring column in grinding out an 82-71 victory over Northwest Kansas Technical College.
Sweeping the season series and snapping its' two game skid, the Cougars improve its' seventh best conference mark to 10-12 and overall record to 16-12 while the Mavericks fall to 4-17 in the Jayhawk and 7-20 on the season.
Barton will travel out west on Saturday for its' final regular season road game at Colby Community College in a 3:00 p.m. start time inside the newly built Colby Event Center before concluding the regular season at home Wednesday night against the KJCCC regular season champions in Dodge City Community College.
Led by Cougar Downing's 20 point output, two other Cougars added double-figure scoring with Trey Bates III scoring 19 and dishing a game high nine assists falling one shy of a double-double while Evans Kipruto secured his third double-double of the season adding 15 on 7-of-10 shooting and pulling down 13 rebounds seven of which on the offensive side.
Myles Arnold's 18 points led Northwest Tech, hitting 3-of-5 from 3-point range and tallying a team high four assists. Timothy Moore Jr. added 13 points on 5-of-14 shooting. Tate Bessire scored 11 points and Youssouf Timera added 10. Lino Manhom led the Mavericks in the rebounding category with nine.
Suffering its' lowest shooting percentage of the season at 32.7 in Monday's road loss, Barton bounced back connecting on 29 of their 53 shots for a sizzling 54.7 percentage, hitting 8-of-18 from long distance and 16-of-25 from the charity stripe.
Northwest Tech shot 33.3 percent (21-63). The Mavericks also went 5-of-16 from behind the arc for a 31.3 percentage while hitting 24-of-32 from the free throw line.
Barton outrebounded its opponents for the 23rd time this year pulling down seven more boards despite a minus-five deficit on the offensive end and 15-10 disadvantage in second chance points.
The Cougars finished above 20-assists for the sixth time this season spreading the wealth on 22 of their 29 made field goals.
RECAP
Trailing for the opening 2:58, a Kipruto flush backed by a trio of layups from Bates, De'Antray Hughes and Hannes Saar delivered an 8-0 response handing Barton a 10-5 edge and the lead over the remaining 37:02.
Trading buckets over the next 10 minutes, back-to-back splashes from long distance by Bates and Downing prompted a quick 6-0 spurt and ultimate 10-0 close to the opening half with Saar and Myles Thompson each adding layups sending Barton into the locker rooms up 36-23.
Swapping the opening two points of the second half, the Cougars grasped their largest lead of 20 at 45-25 with 18:06 to play as back-to-back Hughes alley-oops off Bates' lobs and a Kipruto bucket capped a 6-0 run and 8-2 stretch.
Unable to supply the knockout punch, the Mavericks lingered around the chicken coup as an 8-0 run midway through the second half and 5-0 stretch with 3:27 to play sliced the Barton lead back to single digits at 69-60. A Northwest Tech foul and technical foul just 30-ticks later delivered a 4-0 Cougar response as perfect tosses by Downing and Thompson strung the lead back to double digits at 73-60.
The Mavericks pushed within 79-71 with under a minute to play behind Arnold's cashing of all three 3-pointers made over the final 2:42 while Josh Jordan closed the scoring converting on 3-of-4 attempts at the free throw line in the final 20-seconds closing out the scoring at 82-71.