Cougars suffer first loss of season
The No. 2 ranked Barton County Community College men's basketball team suffered its first loss of the season Thursday afternoon in the mountains of Utah, falling to Chipola (Fla.) Junior College, 72-71 in the first round of the Dixie State College New Year's Tournament at St. George.

Highlights
Barton County jumped to a 7-0 lead off the start but Chipola quickly came back and the two teams traded the lead for much of the first half. The Indians finished the half on a 10-3 run to take a 43-38 lead into the locker room. Chipola quickly built that lead to 10 in the opening stages of the second half and forced the Cougars to play catch-up the rest of the way.

Barton had to play catch-up for most of the second half without the services of starting center Robert Whaley, starting guard and leading scorer Jason Carter as well as back-up center Nouha Diakite. The three sat with four fouls nearly the entire second half.

The Cougars, down 69-60 with 4:41 to play, made a furious rally, capped by Jesse McClung's third 3-pointer in the final eight minutes, to the game at 71-all with just 23 seconds to play in the game. But Diakite fouled Chipola's Wayne Bransom with 6.9 seconds to play. Bransom missed the first free throw, but hit the second for a 72-71 lead. Carter missed a running jumper in with three seconds to play. 

Next Up
Barton County will take on the loser of the Globe Tech (N.Y.)-Utah Valley State game tomorrow at 3 p.m.

Coach Ryan Wolf comments
"They just beat us on the boards; we turned it over at some critical times in the game. What hurt us is at the get-go we get out to a 7-0 lead then we played selfish basketball for the next 15 minutes and it killed us. The post players played really soft."

"I think they just played harder than us. We didn't execute our offense very well. We had some guys that just weren't ready to play.

"I though Jesse McClung stepped up a little bit but still turned the ball over too much. Hopefully we will learn from this."