Cougars roll to win over West co-leader Cloud; end 4-game skid
The Barton County Community College men's basketball team found that formula that had worked so well for the 1st 16 games of the season, including the 1st 2 Jayhawk West games. It came back to Barton Saturday night in an 89-66 drubbing of then West co-leader Cloud County at the Barton County Gym. The win halted a 4-game losing skid for the Cougars and kept Barton just a pair of games out of the West lead. Barton improved to 3-4 in the West with the win and 15-6 overall this season. Cloud fell to 4-3 in the West and a game off the lead. The Thunderbirds are now 15-6 overall as well. Barton will be back on the road for a long Wednesday trip to Liberal to take on Seward County.
Highlights
The Cougars scored more points in the 1st half of their win over Cloud than they did the entire game at Dodge City the previous outing. Cloud led very briefly in the contest, taking a 2-0 lead a couple minutes into the game. Barton answered with an 11-2 run to take an 11-4 advantage and never trailed again the rest of the contest. Barton pushed the lead to 26-7 and eventually led 42-31 at the intermission. In the opening half Barton hit 52 percent of its shots, led by a 6-for-8 effort from Chris Berry.
Cloud trimmed the lead to under 10 for a one possession to start the 2nd half but Barton answered with a 9-0 run to grab a 51-33 lead just 4 minutes into the 2nd half. Cloud would get no closer than 14 points the rest of the way with Barton building a 25-point lead at one point before winning by the 23-point margin.
The Cougars hit 51 percent from the floor in the win, connecting on 33-of-65 shots from the floor. The Cougars also knocked down 4-of-10 3-pointers in the game. Both numbers were the best efforts for Barton since the opening West game of the year – a win at Pratt. The Cougars also out-rebounded Cloud 47-32. Barton scored an impressive 26 points on the fast break as well.
Berry led Barton with 24 points, hitting 10-of-15 shots, and collecting 10 rebounds for a double-double. He was matched with a double-double by a big game from Ivan Evans. Evans burst on the scene with back-to-back 20-point efforts to start conference play before falling off the past 4 games. He missed the entire non-conference slate of games. Evans collected 22 points and a career-high and game-high 15 rebounds in the win. Barton is now 3-0 when Evans scores more than 20 points in a contest. AJ Martin added 11 points and Dominique White scored 10 for Barton. Reed Hein and Geremey Gibson each had 15 to lead Cloud.
Barton will be back on the road Wednesday with a trip to Liberal to take on Seward County. After getting off to a 15-0 start, Seward is now 16-5 on the season, losing 5 of its last 6 contest. The Saints are 2-5 in West play.
Stats
Full stats can be found at www.bartonccc.edu/sports
Next
Wed, Feb 1 – at Seward County, 8 pm (Jayhawk West game at the Greenhouse in Liberal)
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Check out Barton County Basketball Online at www.bartonccc.edu/sports