For three quarters of Saturday night road game at Cloud County Community College, the Barton Community College women's basketball team went toe-for-toe with the fifth place T-birds but a twelve point first quarter deficit proved to be the difference in the Lady Cougars' 67-55 loss. The fourth straight defeat drops Barton to 10-13 in conference play and 13-14 overall while Cloud County improves to 15-8 and 18-8 overall. With just three regular season games remaining, the Lady Cougars' next opportunity to snap the recent slide comes Wednesday with a 6:00 p.m. tip at Pratt Community College (2-21, 3-23).

A twelve point deficit after the first ten minutes grew to as much as twenty before Barton began to find its stride closing out the final minutes of the second quarter on a 6-0 run to cut the margin to nine at the halftime break.

Getting a Jaylin Stapleton bucket to open up third quarter play stretching the run to eight straight points, the seven point margin would be as close as Barton would come in second half play.

Three Lady Cougars finished with ten points, led by Stapleton's second collegiate double-double in dishing out a career high eleven assists. Irene Chukwudi provided a spark off the bench with her ten while collecting a team high nine rebounds and Taylor Regan joined the duo in double-digits but was held to just four rebounds.