The Barton Community College women's basketball team shook off a sluggish start Wednesday evening in rolling to a strong second half 58-42 road win over Cloud County Community College inside the Arley Bryant Gymnasium.
Winners of six straight in the series, the national receiving vote Cougars move to 4-2 in the KJCCC and 10-2 on the season while the loss is the second straight for the T-Birds falling to 4-2 in conference play and 9-3 overall.
Barton will return home Saturday hosting Pratt Community College at 2:00 p.m. before wrapping up the fall slate Monday evening on the road at 23rd ranked Butler Community College in a 5:30 p.m. tip-off.
Three Cougars reached double-figures with eight of the nine hitting the scoring column. Brennan Kirchhoff led all scorers with 15 points on 3-of-5 shooting from behind the arc in being followed by Morgan Meyers and Acorionna Lard's 11 points apiece. Jenny Nkem Womsi fell just shy of her eighth double-double of the season adding eight points and leading all rebounders with 17 despite Barton being outrebounded for just the second time this year 51-37. Leading the Cougars distribution on the night was Lard's five assists and three steals to complete her all-around performance.
Alize Ruiz was the lone T-Bird to reach double-figure scoring while adding the lone double-double on the night with 14 points and 13 rebounds. Te Araroa Sopoaga flirted with a triple-double for Cloud County concluding with eight points, eight rebounds and six assists.
Rinse and repeat would be the storyline for the second straight game with the Cougars digging themselves into an early 4-0 hole and eventual 17-11 deficit at the end of the opening stanza.
Trailing by as much as eight at the midway point of the second quarter, Barton's defensive adjustment switching over to a zone sparked life into the Cougar offense. Scoring the next 12 as a Mikaela Hall free throw, Meyers 5-0 run and the first three of Kirchhoff's six straight points provided Barton its' first lead of 26-25 and eventual 29-28 lead at the break.
Blitzing out of the locker room, the Cougars stretched their 12-2 close in the opening half to 19-2 scoring the opening seven points of the third with buckets by Lard, Womsi and Kirchhoff's second triple of the night pushing the lead to double-digits, 41-30. The lead would squander under double-digits just twice more on the night with the initial coming on the T-Birds first field goal of the quarter with 3:40 to play until a Lili Shubert trey later succeeded on a pair of Kirchhoff tosses pushed the advantage back to double-digits the rest of the way.
Shooting over 30% in the opening three frames, the Cougars lone drop off was 26.7% shooting in the final frame while still managing to outscore the T-Birds in scoring production 9-7 as Cloud County suffered an even worse 13.3%. Barton grabbed its' largest lead of 17 succeeding a Kirchhoff trey and Lard jumper with 2:48 to play.
Outscored 17-11 over the opening 10-minutes, the Cougars returned the favor over the final 30-minutes outmatching the T-Birds 47-26 including a 29-15 edge in the final two stanzas.
Barton won the turnover battle recording a new season low 11 while forcing Cloud County to cough the ball up 19 times leading to a 20 to 4 advantage in points off turnovers.