18th ranked Cougars snap streak with 80-70 victory at Seward County #GoBarton

The Barton Community College men's basketball team trailed just once early in Wednesday evening's KJCCC contest in Liberal but had a big lead dwindle in holding on for an 80-70 victory at Seward County Community College.

Erasing an early one-point deficit, the Cougars put together stretches of eight and eleven straight to eventually build a sixteen-point advantage before going to the halftime break up 39-30.

Pushing the margin back out to thirteen in the first five minutes out of the locker room, the offense then stalled out for the next five as Seward County's 15-2 stretch cut the home squad's deficit to just one at 50-49 with 10:28 left.

Barton answered with the next six points, holding the margin until a Saint five-point spurt cut the deficit to one again with 4:11 remaining at 64-63.

From there the Cougars got clutch buckets from Brent Moss, James Parlow, Jr., and Sebastian Muchitsch, along with defensive stops aiding Barton's sharp shooting free throw conversions from Keandre Kindell and Aris Rodriguez in holding off the upset bid.

Snapping its three-game slide, Barton improves to 4-3 in conference play and 9-3 overall while Seward County slips to 1-5 in league and 2-9 overall.

Barton closes out the pre-holiday break on Saturday in a 3:00 p.m. tip at Dodge City Community College as the Conquistadors come off their bye night looking to avenge its prior game overtime loss to Seward County.

The Cougars' nearly pure 25-of-30 free throw shooting was helped by the combined 18-of-18 from Kindell and Rodriguez by sinking 10 and 8 from the stripe respectively.

Rodriguez led all scorers on the evening with a new career high 21 points, adding 3-of-5 shooting beyond the arc on top of his 8-of-8 charity tosses. Kindell scored ten of his 12 points in second half action including six pure toe-the-line shots in the final two minutes on a perfect 10-of-10 free throw shooting performance.

Moss compiled an all-around 17-point outing behind draining a triple and six free throws, had two steals, and grabbed six of his 8 rebounds from the offensive glass.

Parlow, Jr. gave the Cougars a spark off the bench with his second consecutive game recording a career high, finishing with 11 points and an additional career high 7 rebounds.

Muchitsch led the Cougars with 9 rebounds and 4 assists with two of his 6 points coming on a step-in 20-foot jumper pushing Barton's advantage to six with 45 seconds remaining.

Three Saints reached double-figures on a combined 8-of-14 three-point shooting, Taky Prosper leading with 14 points, Kiku Parker adding 13 points, and Dekwon Brown contributing 11 points.