Barton women back to winning ways with road victory at Hutchinson
The Barton County Community College women's basketball team put another notch in the winning column Saturday night at the Sports Arena in Hutchinson with a 60-54 win over Hutch in Jayhawk West play. The win ended a brief 2-game skid by the Cougars, who had lost 4 of its last 5 contests. Barton is now 8-4 in the West and 21-5 overall while Hutch is 3-9 and 15-11. The Cougars trailed by as many as 8 points in the 2nd half before rallying for the win and taking a step closer to a home playoff game in the upcoming Region VI tournament. The Cougars could still finish as high as 2nd in the West or as low as 5th, depending on what the final 4 games brings. The final 4 contests with begin with a pair on the road, starting in El Dorado against Butler County Wednesday night.
Highlights
The opening half of basketball saw 7 ties and 3 lead changes and the two teams went back and forth. Barton led by 5 in the half early on with Hutch taking a 4 point lead later in the opening half. The Blue Dragons went to the locker room with a 25-24 lead on the Cougars.
Barton started the 2nd half off on a good foot, scoring the 1st 4 points for a 3-point lead. It was a short-lived lead, though, as Barton stayed on 32 points from the 16:47 mark until the 10:07 mark. During that time, the Blue Dragons built their biggest lead of the game at 40-32. But the final 10 minutes of play would be Barton just about as many points (28) as the 1st 30 minutes (32).
After falling behind by 8 points after going without a point for nearly 7 minutes, the Cougars scored 11 points over the next 2 minutes to take a 43-42 lead. Sunshine Uli broke the drought with a basket on a feed from Stephanie N'Garsanet. She was fouled on the play, converted the free throw, and the Barton comeback was on. KG Hellen, Brianna Buchanan and ChrisDell Harris each added hoops to make it 42-41 in favor of Hutch before Uli connected on another layup from Harris to give Barton a 43-42 lead with 8:07 to play.
The two teams were tied at 47-all with 5:17 to play before a 5-0 run by Barton gave the Cougars the lead for good. N'Garsanet scored all 5 points in the run for Barton to give Barton a 52-47 lead with 4:32 left. From that point, it was a free throw shooting contest for the Cougars. Barton hit 6-of-8 free throws in the final 4 minutes to secure the win.
Buchanan led Barton with 15 points, followed by Uli with 14 and N'Garsanet with 12. N'Garsanet collected her 1st double-double of the season by adding a game-high 10 rebounds as well. Tessa Murrow had a game-high 24 points for Hutch in the loss.
Stats
Complete stats can be found at www.bartonccc.edu/sports
Next
Wed., Feb. 22 – at Butler County, 6 pm (Jayhawk West play at the Power Plant in El Dorado)