The Barton Community College women's basketball team bounced back from its first home loss of the season with a stifling defense in defeating Garden City Community College 59-48.
Sweeping the season series, Barton improves to 10-3 in Jayhawk play and 16-3 overall while dropping Garden City to 3-10 in league and 7-12 on the season.
Barton will enjoy its bye on the schedule to have a week's rest before heading to Cowley College next Wednesday for a 5:30 p.m. tip-off.
Jenny Nkem Womsi led the Cougars with a career high 25 points, eclipsing double-digits in rebounding for the 16th time of the season in recording her 13th double-double of the year. Morgan Meyers, who canned a pair of triples getting Barton out to a 16-8 first quarter advantage, finished with 19 points to round out the double-digit scoring. Coming off a career high 27 points on Saturday, Acorionna Lard added seven points with another solid all-around floor game of five rebounds and a game high five assists.
Garden City also had a pair of double figure scorers led by Dayshawna Carter with 20 points to hit her season average with Stevi Yancy coming off the bench for a career high 12 points.
Barton got off to a good 7-2 start behind five Meyers' points only to have Garden City fire back with six straight in claiming the lead. Meyers then buried her second and final trey of the night with Womsi dumping in the next six points for a 9-0 close out of the final 3:46 of the opening frame for a 16-8 lead.
Meyers again gave Barton a pair of eleven point advantages in the first four minutes of the second quarter but then the offensive well went dry the next four minutes as Garden City scored thirteen straight resulting in a 25-23 visitor lead. Lard's And-1 ended the drought at the 1:29 mark with Garden City canning their fifth three-pointer of the half within their 61.5% field goal shooting in the ten minutes to enjoy a 28-27 lead.
Following the Busters' opening the third frame with a bucket, Barton put the clamps down defensively in the quarter limiting Garden City to just one more field goal and two additional points from the free throw line.
Offensively Barton put together spurts of six, five, and the last four points of the quarter to outscore the Broncbusters 17-6 in the period for a ten point 44-34 lead. Womsi tacked on seven of Barton's points with Meyers and Brennan Kirchhoff adding four each as the Cougars shot over 54% in quarter while Garden City connected on just 18%.
Barton kept their double-digit lead for most of the final ten minutes, stretching the lead to as many as thirteen with a trio of times in the final five minutes to complete the season sweep.
Barton finished the contest at 50% from the field, posting season lows in attempts (42), three-pointers launched (9) and made (2) while remaining solid at the free throw line increasing their region leading percentage in sinking 15-of-18 from the stripe (83.3%).
Garden City finished the evening at 34% from the field, 5-of-15 beyond the arc, and didn't help their cause on 7-of-17 (46.7%) from the free throw line.