Barton keeps pace atop Jayhawk West with home win over Pratt
The Barton County Community College men's basketball team took care of business Wednesday night by defeating Pratt at the Barton County Gym, 75-51. The win keeps the Cougars at the top of the Jayhawk West and sets up a string of 4 games that sees the Cougars playing each of the top teams in the conference. That stretch begins Saturday when the Cougars travel to Garden City. That is followed by a home tilt against Colby and road games at Hutchinson and Butler County. Barton is now 8-2 in the West, holding a 1/2 game lead over Hutch, who is 7-2. Garden is 7-3 and Colby is 6-4.

Highlights
The Cougars never trailed in the contest, riding a pair of JP Batista buckets and an Aubrey Bruner 3-poiner to a quick 7-2 lead. Three more Batista hoops, another Bruner trey and a Justin Rose tip in pushed the Barton lead to 18-2 just 8 minutes into the contest and the Cougars never looked back. The closest Pratt would get after that was 13 points. A Batista dunk in the latter stages of the opening half gave Barton a commanding 43-19 halftime lead.

The lead reached 32 points when Josh Rose threw down an alley-oop pass from Bruner giving Barton a 58-26 lead with 11 minutes left. The lead stayed in the 20's most of the remainder of the game as the Cougar bench saw a lot of action the final 10 minutes of the game.

Batista had a huge game for the Cougars, hitting 10-of-12 shots from the floor and 3-of-3 at the free throw line for 23 points. He also snagged 10 rebounds in 27 minutes of playing time for his 8th double-double of the season. Bruner added 11 points in the win and dished out 5 assists with no turnovers. Justin Rose had 9 points and 8 rebounds, Rone Smith 9 points and 7 rebounds, and Antanas Kavaliauskas finished with 8 points and 7 rebounds.

The Cougars shutdown the West's 2nd leading scorer, limiting Tony Bennett to just 8 points on 4-of-17 shooting. Bennett also had 8 turnovers. Marcus Wimberly led the Beavers with 12 points.

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

Next
Feb. 7 – at Garden, 8 pm (Jayhawk West contest at the Garden City Gym)

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Check out Barton County Men's Basketball Online at www.bartonccc.edu/sports