Barton loses heart-breaker to Pratt
The Barton Community College men’s basketball team suffered a tough loss Saturday night at the hands of the Pratt Beavers, falling 74-71 at the Barton Gym. Barton led nearly the entire contest before Pratt finally overtook the Cougars late in the game for the win. Barton drops to 13-9 overall with the loss and 3-5 in the Jayhawk West. Pratt improves to 16-6 and 5-3. Barton rolls into a busy start to February with back-to-back road trips during the week. Barton will be at Concordia to take on Cloud County Monday then in Liberal to do battle with Seward County Wednesday. Both games tip at 8 pm.
Highlights
Barton scored the opening 4 points of the contest to grab a lead it would hold nearly the entire game. The Cougars dominated the opening half of action, hitting nearly 50 percent from the field and building a lead of 13 points at the midway point of the half. Barton pushed that lead to 16 late in the half at 35-19 before the Beavers trimmed it to 11 points at half.
Pratt quickly made a game of it in the 2nd half, cutting the margin to just a single digit at 43-42 with 15 minutes to play, but Barton wouldn’t give that lead up. The Cougars pushed it back to 6 points at 52-46 with 13 minutes left. Pratt came back and cut it to 1 again at 54-53 with 10 minutes to play and had a chance for a lead a couple possessions later but couldn’t overtake the Cougars.
Barton again pushed it back to 6 points with a 63-57 lead on a Coin Beatty 3-pointer with 4:48 to play. Pratt finally caught Barton with a 6-0 to even the score at 63-all with 3:16 left, but didn’t take a lead on the Cougars until 1:44 left on a pair of Illiwa Baldwin free throws for a 70-68 lead. Barton never led again after that.
The Cougars were paced by Beatty’s 20-point effort to go with 13 rebounds for his 2nd straight double-double and 9th double-double of the year for the freshman. Joe Reid added 13 points and Ronald Baker 11. Samer Jassar grabbed 11 rebounds for the Cougars as well. Pratt’s 6-10 sophomore Baldwin scored 24 points and had 12 rebounds for the Beavers.
Barton will have a big week ahead with the road trips to Concordia and Liberal. The week concludes with a home date with Dodge City Saturday. The Saturday contest will be Homecoming for the Cougars.
Stats
Stats can be found at www.bartonccc.edu/sports
Next
Feb 1 – at Cloud 8 pm (Jayhawk West play at Bryant Gym in Concordia)
-30-
Check out Barton Basketball Online at www.bartonccc.edu/sports |
