The Barton Community College men's basketball team never trailed Wednesday night at the Barton Gym, shooting over 54% in both halves in cruising to a 91-67 victory over Northwest Kansas Technical College.
Winners of four straight, Barton improves to 12-7 on the season for a third place 11-7 mark while sending NW Tech to its 25th straight road loss in eliminating the Mavericks from playoff contention at 1-17 in both conference and overall.
Barton's next game comes Saturday at Pratt Community College in a 7:30 p.m. tip-off before closing out the regular season next week with home dates against West leader 23rd ranked Hutchinson on Monday and second place Dodge City on Wednesday.
Jaheim Holden's 18 points with six assists paced four Cougars in double-figures with Asanti Price pouring in 15 points and four steals as the duo combined for 5-of-10 shooting behind the arc.
As a team, the Cougars knocked down 11-of-21 for 52.4% as the Region VI leading club shot 54.5% in each half.
Desean Munson posted his 5th double-double of the season, scoring 14 points and leading a Cougar +4 edge on the glass by hauling down 13 rebounds. Justin Harmon also added 14 points with Cameron Brooks-Harris adding 9 points and 5 assists while Shawn Warrior grabbed two of his four rebounds on the offensive end in contributing 9 points and four steals.
Malik Lacewell came off the bench to lead the Maverick scoring with 17 points on 3-of-6 behind the arc and 7 rebounds. Jacari Chambers added 12 points with Hantz Louis-Jeune contributing 10 points going 6-of-6 from the free throw line as NW Tech sunk 19-of-23 (82.6%) from the stripe.
RECAP
Tied at 4-all and leading at 8-6, the Cougars began to put the Mavericks in the taillights on 10-0 run beginning with a Brooks-Harris three-ball and five coming from Warrior including his lone trey of the night.
Following a Maverick three-pointer, Price countered with the first of his three treys with Holden later adding his first pushing the lead out to 28-12 with 7:03 remaining. The lead grew to twenty with 4:07 left as the Cougars would go on to enjoy a 43-21 halftime break following consecutive triples from Brooks-Harris and Price in the final two minutes.
The Mavericks put together a 5-0 run to cut the margin to sixteen at the media timeout but Holden's personal six point spurt within the next two minutes pushed the gap back out comfortable.
Following a perfect two charity tosses from Jarin Koehler for Barton's largest lead of twenty-eight with 3:50 to play, the Mavericks strung nine straight in ninety seconds to make their final run.
Triples from Brooks-Harris, Thomas King, and Koehler closed out the Barton scoring as all but one of ten Cougars hit the scoring column.