The Barton Community College men's basketball team attacked the rim and knocked down timely shots Saturday at the Barton Gym to remain unbeaten on the season in a 91-82 win over Butler Community College. Scoring thirty-three points from the charity stripe, Barton also shot 52% from the field including a 63% second half performance while forcing a season high twenty-four turnovers. The victory improved Barton to 3-0 in conference play and 7-0 overall while Butler slips to 1-2 and 4-2 on the year. Barton will get another game in before the Thanksgiving break on Tuesday in a 7:30 p.m. tip at the Barton Gym hosting Seward County Community College.
Coming into the contest ranking second in the conference at 72.8% from the free throw line, the Cougars appeared shooting with the off-hand in a four minute stretch missing seven straight. The drought coupled by consecutive treys by Jared Armstrong and Ketarrious Bouchum surged the lead to the Grizzlies at 65-62 with 8:11 to play.
Two minutes later Barton would get the first of timely shots down the stretch as Noah Webster buried his fourth fifth triple of the night putting the Cougars back on top. Following another Armstrong bomb to tie it up thirty-seconds later, a Kawanise Wilkins jumper followed by a Webster steal leading to Wilkins sinking 2-of-2 from the line put the Cougars out front for good at 72-68 with 4:54 remaining.
Butler closed the gap to two a minute later but a Wilkins inside bucket and Webster draining his fifth trey quickly pushed the lead out to 79-72 with 2:38 left. From there Barton would sink 10-of-12 charity throws down the stretch while Butler went 3-of-10 from the field to come up short.
Webster's twenty points off the bench led all scorers as the Buhler sophomore dialed up 5-of-9 from long range to go along with a 3-of-4 effort from the stripe. Four other Cougars reached double digits as Wilkins was joined by Marvin Cannon and Keshon Montague with eighteen points each while Elijah Ford added fourteen. Wilkins and Ford each just missed double-double efforts in hauling down nine rebounds each with the conference leading distributor Montague finished with six dimes to go along with four steals.
Butler also placed five in double-digit scoring led by the eighteen points from Armstrong as the Philadelphia sophomore buried 4-of-8 behind the arc while Bouchum added fourteen. Leading n eighteen point bench advantage over the Cougars, Equan Ards dropped thirteen points with Justin Criddle and Anthony Bratton each contributing ten. Russell Smith led the Grizzlies to an eight rebound edge hauling down eight with Criddle dishing out five assists.
Looking ahead to Tuesday's action, Seward County got defensive to notch their first conference win of the year with a 56-39 victory at Cloud County Community College. Fresh off an overtime victory over No. 1 ranked Hutchins, the T-birds were held to just 22.6% shooting from the field as the Saints improved to 5-2 on the year with the victory.
Other Game Notes:
- Barton's win avenged an 87-84 setback to the Grizzlies last year at the Barton Gym
- Barton now has won 4-of-the-last-5 and 8-of-the-last 11 games against Butler
- Barton now leads the overall series 55-42 overall and 30-18 at the Barton Gym
- Barton's fifty-three free throw attempts is just seven shy of the school record 60 attempts in its February 9, 1994, contest versus Garden City Community College
- Barton's thirty-three made free throws was eight shy of the school record 43 made throws set November 18, 1989, versus Neosho County Community College
- Barton finished 6-of-16 from behind the arc which snapped a six game streak of making ten or more three pointers.