The Barton Community College men's basketball team led for all but three minutes Tuesday night at the Barton Gym in picking up a 100-77 victory over Neosho County Community College.
The Cougars improve to 3-1 on the year in dropping Neosho County to 1-2.
Barton will now turn its sights on hosting the weekend's Best Western/Cougar Booster Club Classic. On Friday the Cougars take on Wilbur Wright College followed by Saturday's game against Victoria. A 7:30 p.m. tipoff slated for each of the contests with live stream audio and video coverage available on the Barton Sports Network found at www.BartonSports.com. Also competing in the Classic's earlier 3:00 p.m. contest each day will be the 6th ranked Blue Dragons of Hutchinson Community College.
Ring Malith had a game high 24 points on 10-of-11 shooting from the field including a perfect 4-for-4 night from long distance leading a six pack of Cougars in double-figure scoring. Sophomore Joseph Locandro continued his early season dominance posting his third double-double in five games adding 19 points on 8-of-10 shooting and collecting a game high 10 rebounds including four from the offensive glass. Leading production off the bench was Christian Bowen-Webb's 13 and Cooper Jackson's 12 helping Barton to a slim 38-36 positive bench production. Cougar Downing reached double-figure scoring for the fourth straight time adding 11 points in just 21-minutes of action.
Holding a 20-10 edge in distributions was Mozae Downing-Rivers with six assists with Hannes Saar falling one back with five.
Three Panthers reached double figures led by Dariq Williams 16 points aided behind 4-of-9 from behind the three-point line and team high seven boards. Davion Lewis fell just behind with 14 points while Michael Odingo rounded out the top scorers with 11 points
Holding as big of a 19 point lead in the opening stanza, the Cougars took a 45-29 advantage into the locker rooms shooting a solid 45%, 18-for-40 from the field while holding the Panthers to just 7-for-32 at 21.9%..
In the second half, the Barton offense ramped up the offense dropping 55 building up a lead as large of 27 with 2:11 to enhance their first half-shooting mark of 45% to 54.1% on 20-of-37 to finish at 49.4% for the evening. Cold in the opening frame, Neosho County changed the course in the second half improving their first half mark by almost 20% scoring 48-points on 16-of-39 shooting capping the night at 32.4%.