Barton wins ugly; escapes Garden with 55-44 victory
The Barton County Community College women's basketball team was coming off two emotional wins against the only two teams to have beaten them this season. So it was little surprise the Cougars had a bit of a letdown on the road Saturday at Garden City. In the end, though, Barton came away with a 55-44 win at the Perryman Center. The Cougars have now won 9 straight and still hold a 1/2 game lead in the Jayhawk West standings at 11-2. Cloud County is the only other 2 loss team in the conference at 10-2. The Cougars are 25-2 overall on the season. Garden fell to 10-17 overall and 5-8 in the West. Barton will be back at home this week for 2 games hosting Butler (2-11, 7-19) Wednesday and Hutch (9-3, 20-6) Saturday. Both games tip at 6 pm.
Highlights
Barton was never able to separate itself from the Broncbusters Saturday, but never trailed the final 23 minutes of the game either. The Cougars were able to build a lead of 10 points with 13 minutes to play but still couldn't shake the pesky Garden City club which got the lead back down to 6 points with 7:44 to play at 43-37. Barton followed with a 7-3 run capped by an Ipek Turkyilmaz 3-pointer to put the lead back to 10 at 50-40 with 6 minutes left. In the final 6 minutes, both teams had trouble scoring as Barton outscored Garden 5-4 during that span for the 55-44 win.
Barton hit just 31 percent (22-71) for the contest, netting just 4-of-20 3-pointers in the game. The Cougars came into the contest hitting an average of 8 3's a contest at a 36 percent clip. The Cougars were shooting just over 44 percent from the field going into the game. Barton also struggled at the free throw line going just 7-of-15. Fortunately for the Cougars, their defense held Garden to just 27 percent (17-63) shooting in the contest. The Broncbusters did hit 8-of-30 3-pointers to keep themselves in the game.
Some more numbers that were out of character for Barton in the contest were the Cougars scored just 16 points off 24 Garden turnovers. Barton barely outscored Garden in the paint – a 22-16 advantage and the Cougars scored just 12 fast break points and 9 2nd chance points.
Kristine Silaraja and Courtney Sturdivant each scored 12 points to lead Barton but put up a combined 24 shots to do it. Turkyilmaz added 11. Inga Muciniece grabbed 11 rebounds in the game – her 4th straight double figure rebound game – and led Barton with 4 steals and 5 assists despite hitting just 1-of-13 from the floor and scoring just 2 points. No Garden City player scored double figures in the game but 3 players each had 9 points, combining for all 8 3-pointers. The trio of Amber Brown, Katie Novack and Jessica Copeland combined to go 8-of-23 behind the arc.
The Cougars will try to regain focus when Butler comes to the Barton Gym Wednesday for a 6 pm tip. Barton won at Butler earlier this year 86-44. Hutchinson, just 1 loss behind Barton in the West, comes to the Barton Gym Saturday.
Stats
Stats can be found at www.bartonccc.edu/sports
Next
Wed Feb 20 – v Butler, 6 pm (Jayhawk West contest at the Barton Gym in Great Bend)