Cougars find offense in 2nd half; roll to 73-54 win at Butler

Cougars find offense in 2nd half; roll to 73-54 win at Butler
The Barton County Community College women's basketball team struggled to make a basket the opening 20 minutes Wednesday night in El Dorado, but Barton found its offense in the 2nd half, rolling to a 73-54 win over Butler County at the Power Plant. The Cougars scored 50 2nd half points to turn a 1-point halftime lead into an easy win on the road. The win moved Barton to 13-1 in the Jayhawk West with just 2 games remaining. Barton will more than likely need those 2 wins in order to share the best record in the West with No. 3 Seward County, which is 12-1 and won its final big-time test Wednesday night with a win at No. 9 Cloud County. Barton is now 25-3 on the season with a road game at Hutchinson Saturday before closing the season out at home Wednesday with Colby. Butler fell to 7-7 in the West and 19-9 overall this season.

Highlights
Barton started quickly with an 8-2 lead on the Grizzlies and still led by 6 at 10-4 with 14:43 to play. But the Cougars would follow with a 6-minute scoring drought. Fortunately for the Cougars, Butler only scored 5 points during that span and Barton held onto the lead. But another 2:30 scoring drought later in the half by the Cougars would allow Butler to claim its 1st lead of the game, pushing the lead to 18-14 with 2:53 to play in the half. Barton finally found a little flow in the offense late in the half, scoring on 3 straight possessions and 4 of its last 6 to take a 23-22 lead to halftime following 2 free throws by Jessica Halsig with 2 seconds left in the half.

Both teams picked up the scoring some in the opening 5 minutes of the 2nd half but the Cougars still couldn't shake the Grizzlies and following a 3-pointer by Butler's Megan Cherry with 14:38 to play, the game was tied at 38-all. More than 7 minutes later Butler still had 38 points.

The Cougars started the run simple enough at Tiffany Haggen hit 1-of-2 free throws with 13:14 left to play. But it was at the 12-minute mark when the Cougars really hit the gas pedal. Up just 39-38 Barton scored on 7 straight possessions to put the game out of reach. LaToya Jackson's jumper with 12:09 to play started the string. What followed went like this – Butler miss, Halsig 3-pointer; Butler miss, Inga Muciniece layup of offensive rebound; Butler miss, Jackson layup of offensive rebound; Butler miss, Andrea Barber 3-pointer; Butler miss; Hagen fast-break layup; Butler miss, Ipek Turkyilmaz 3-pointer. That gave the Cougars' a 56-38 lead with 7:44 to play. The Grizzlies would get the score down to 13 with a brief 5-0 run to make it 56-43 but the Cougars answered with an 11-2 run to make it a 22-point contest.

Tiffany Hagen had her best game of the conference season, leading Barton with 16 points off the bench. She 6-1 freshman added 8 rebounds as well. Barber and Jackson each had 12 points and 6 assists while Muciniece recorded another double-double – her 14th of the season and 12th in the last 16 games – with 10 points and 12 rebounds. Lakeshia Levi scored 18 to lead Butler on 6-of-20 shooting. Butler's top 3 scorers on the season combined to shoot just 11-of-47 against the Cougars' defense.

Stats
Full stats can be found at www.bartonccc.edu/sports

Next
Sat, Feb 24 – at Hutch, 6 pm (Jayhawk West play at the Sports Arena in Hutchinson)