Life in the Jayhawk can be very unkind from night to night as the Barton Community College women's basketball team found out Wednesday in dropping a 68-35 loss at the Barton Gym to Garden City Community College in the teams' conference opener.
The Cougars drop to 3-4 on the season while Garden City improves to 3-0. The Cougars have some time to lick their wounds before their next contest coming Tuesday at Cowley College in a 5:30 p.m. tip-off.
RECAP
The night couldn't have started much worse for the Cougars, missing their first eleven shots from the field until Mikaela Hall's spinning jumper in the lane halted the drought with 1:08 left in the quarter. Fortunately for Barton, Garden City wasn't much better in connecting on just three of their seventeen shots to lead 6-2 after the opening 10-minutes.
The Broncbusters heated up in the second frame to 55% (11-20) while the Cougars' six turnovers took away possessions while making just a pair of their seven shots as Garden City would double-up the margin at 32-16 into the halftime break. A 6-0 Broncbuster spurt took the margin to double-digits through the first four minutes then knocked down consecutive three pointers following Dayjsha Fanning's pair of free throws to stretch the lead out. Playing her first game as a Cougar, Erin Foxhall contributed all of her points in the contest from the free throw line, sinking a perfect pair of trips to the stripe including two of those prior to Garden City netting the half's final two points.
The third quarter didn't begin much better for the Cougars, Garden City scored on their first possession with Barton getting a pair of Fanning free throws to counter. It was all Garden City for the next five minutes in scoring the next twelve points pushing the margin out to 28 points. A Jenny Nkem Womsi strong move in the paint halted the stretch at the 4:19 mark as the teams put up just five points each the rest of the way.
Trading points for the first three minutes of the final quarter, Garden City pushed the lead out to 33 with 4:54 to play on a five point spurt including knocking down their final of three long range shots. Acorionna Lard consecutive buckets was then replied by six straight giving the Broncbusters' largest lead of 35 before Britney Schroer's late jumper put the final points on the board.
STATS
Nine Cougars landed in the scoring column but none reached double-digits as Barton was led by the 7 points and 7 rebounds from Fanning.
Barton shot just 20.9% for the game, making just 9 of their 43 shots while coming up empty from beyond the arc in eight launches.
Garden City was led by the double-double effort from Justis Odom scoring 16 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. Alexis Smith added 10 points while Ashton McCorry hauled down a game high 12 rebounds helping the Broncbusters to a fifteen rebound advantage.
The Broncbusters recovered from their opening dismal quarter shooting to connect on 25-of-46 shots the remaining thirty minutes to shoot 44.4% for the game