The Barton Community College men's basketball team had its season come to an end Monday night in the Region VI semifinals at Park City's Hartman Arena as the Cougars lost 94-70 to 13th ranked Seward County Community College.
Making their third straight appearance in the semifinals, Barton concludes the season at 25-8 while the Saints improve to 28-5 advancing to Wednesday night's championship game.
Attempting to knock off the Saints for the first time in the season's three meetings, Barton's slow start led to a ten point deficit until Leondre Washington's trey put Barton on the scoreboard nearly four minutes into the contest. The seven point deficit would be the closest Barton would be the rest of the evening.
Even at a fifteen point disadvantage with 6:16 to play Barton was within reach but an eight minute scoring drought ensued as Seward County widened 43-15 halftime score to a thirty-two point lead until Washington's layup at 18:16 left in the game broke the stretch. Two minutes later the deficit grew to a game high thirty-four points as Seward County rolled on to the final twenty-four point win for the largest Saints' victory of the series.
The Cougars shot just 17.2% in the first twenty minutes while the Saints were a solid 51.4% percent. Barton heated up in second half play for a 46.5% clip but Seward County was even better at a red hot 64.3% including an eighteen point advantage in the paint to thwart any kind of Cougar comeback attempt.
Four Cougars playing their final game in the Barton uniform reached double figures with John Williams leading the fifteen points. Barton's leading scorers on the season in Washington and Elijah Ford each finished with fourteen points with Ford hauling down eight rebounds. Tyrell Andrews came off the bench for a season high thirteen points draining 3-of-5 behind the arc and grabbing three of his five boards from the offensive glass. Fellow sophomore Akeem White just missed his fourth double-double of the year with a team leading ten rebounds to go along with eight points.
Seward County nearly had three players reach twenty points as Devin Bethely's 4-of-5 long distance shooting led the way with twenty-one points. Isaiah Small played all but five of the blowout game to post a double-double twenty points and eleven rebounds with Marco Morency adding nineteen coming off the bench.
