Barton drops road tilt at Garden
The Barton County Community College men's basketball team is off to a tough start in Jayhawk West play after a 69-56 road loss in Garden City Saturday night. The loss gives the Cougars an 0-2 start in the conference and drops them to 5-10 overall this season. Garden City, picked to win the West by the coaches in the pre-season poll, improves to 2-0 in the West and 10-6 overall. Barton will go after its 1st conference win again Wednesday when Colby visits the Barton County Gym for a 7:30 pm tip.

Highlights
The Cougars battled with the West favorites on their home floor about half of the contest but poor shooting would once again doom the Barton attack. Barton shot 41 percent from the floor in the opening half as they led much of the half before falling behind late to go to the locker room down 34-27. The difference in the half was Barton hit just 1-of-10 3-point shots in the opening half to Garden's 4-of-7.

But the 2nd half was a much different story as Barton connected on just 9-of-31 shots from the floor for 29 percent as Garden City jumped to a double digit lead early in the half and built that lead to as high as 19 points at 50-31 with just less than 14 minutes to play. At that point Garden City went cold, scoring just one point over the next 8 minutes. But during those same 8 minutes, the Cougars could only muster 12 points to cut the lead to 51-43. Barton was 3-of-11 during that stretch with a pair of turnovers. The Cougars also missed the front end of a 1-and-1 but did convert on 6-of-7 charity tosses to close the game to 8, but that was as close as Barton would get until 60-53 with just more than one minute left.

The Cougars were paced by Antanas Kavaliauskas, who turned in another double-double effort. The 6-10 sophomore scored 16 points and grabbed 14 rebounds during the contest. Caleb Tegtmeier, making his 2nd start and the1st since the opening game of the year, scored a career-high 13 points and Diogo Salazar added a career high 11. B.J. Walker had 20 points and 10 board to pace Garden while Torre Johnson added 18.

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

Next
Wed., Jan 12 – v Colby, 7:30 pm (Jayhawk West contest at the Barton County Gym)

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