The Barton Community College women's basketball team concluded the regular season Monday in Chanute with an 87-62 win at Neosho County Community College. The third straight win, along with Coffeyville's loss, moved Barton into an eight place tie in the Jayhawk at 13-13 and 16-14 overall while Neosho County dropped to 4-22 and 7-23 on the year.
Next up for the Lady Cougars is a trip to Coffeyville as the teams were deadlocked through multiple tie-break scenarios before a coin flip determined Thursday's host. Having defeated the Red Ravens 65-48 at the Barton Gym just this past Saturday, the unlucky side of the coin will send Barton to the site where Coffeyville handed the Lady Cougars a twenty-five point defeat back on January 10. Game time at Nellis Hall Gymnasium is set for 7:00 p.m. with the winner advancing to Monday's 1:00 p.m. quarterfinal at Park City's Hartman Arena against top seed No. 10 Seward County Community College.
For those unable to make the trip to Coffeyville, Eagle Radio stations 1590AM and 97.7FM will be carrying the play-by-play action with audio streaming on the web as well at www.GreatBendPost.com. The links, along with video streaming provided by Red Ravens, can also be found at www.BartonSports.com.
In playoff mode for the past three games in fighting for the home berth, the Lady Cougars did its part getting out to twenty-one point lead after the first ten minutes Monday to cruised to the victory.
Despite an ugly second quarter of scoring just nine points, four coming from sophomore leader Micaela Jellison, Barton still had a semi comfortable eleven point lead to the break at 40-29.
Jellison would add four more points in Barton's first six out of the locker room with the game breaking wide open moments later as Mallory Miller and Jaylin Stapleton buried consecutive three-pointers around a pair of Panther free throws. The duo continued the spurt with two Stapleton drives to the cup on either side of another Miller trey as Barton pushed the margin to twenty five with the 12-2 stretch.
A five point spurt by the Panthers briefly halted the momentum as the Lady Cougars would close out the quarter on an 8-2 run capped by a Ryen White three-pointer before Taylor Regan's jumper to begin the fourth pushed the lead out to twenty-eight.
Stapleton led all scorers with twenty-one points and just missing her second straight double-double with nine assists to go along with six rebounds. Regan chalked up her seventh double-double in scoring nineteen points with twelve rebounds while Jellison posted her second of the year with a sixteen point ten rebound night. Miller concluded the double-digit scorers with sixteen points going 5-of-7 behind the arc to exceed four made trey in a game for the eleventh time of the Eisenhower freshman's season.
Beth Hawkins was the lone Panther in double-figures knocking down three treys in scoring thirteen points while Alexis Casher grabbed a team high seven rebounds with DeQuandra Lyles dishing out six assists.