GREAT BEND, Kan. (BartonSports.com) – Coming off a sour loss last time on the court, the 13th ranked Barton Community College men’s basketball team led for most of Saturday’s home hosting for a bounce-back 75-64 victory over 12th ranked Coffeyville Community College.
Victors of five straight in the series, Barton improves to 8-4 in KJCCC play and 14-4 overall while Coffeyville’s four-win streak ends dropping out of the top spot of the conference race at 10-2 and moving to 14-4 on the season.
The Cougars begin the second trip around the rugged conference slate on Wednesday at Hutchinson against the third place and nationally receiving votes Blue Dragons. Tip off at the Sports Arena slated for 7:30 p.m. following the earlier women’s contest.
Coffeyville’s lone leads came in the first half of play, its largest at the 10:36 mark at 15-12. Turning the Red Ravens over twelve times in the opening twenty minutes, including six in the first four minutes, Barton turned the tide for good with 4:14 remaining on an 8-0 run to never trail again.
Leading by eight late in the half before Coffeyville’s waning seconds three-pointer, the Cougars expanded their five-point locker room advantage with a 7-0 spurt to increase the margin to double-digits by the 16:40 mark on Eltramon Smith, Jr.‘s flush from Keandre Kindell‘s alley-oop pass.
Two minutes later James Parlow, Jr. put up five points within a 12-0 run, capping the stretch with one of his two three pointers pushing the lead out to fifteen points.
Hitting the fifteen point gap two more times, Barton reached its largest margin of nineteen points on a 5-0 spurt as Kindell’s 9th assist set up Smith, Jr.’s arc buster for a 62-43 lead with 9:09 left.
From there the Cougars kept its double-digit lead until twenty-nine ticks left from a Coffeyville three-pointer before Brent Moss sealed the afternoon’s scoring sinking a pair of charity tosses.
Moss took home team high scoring honors with 17 points as the reigning KJCCC Player of the Week fell short of his fourth straight double-double by collecting just 4, to go along with, 2 assists and 2 blocks.
Kindell added 14 points while matching his career high with the 9 assists to fall shy of his first collegiate double-double. The Wichita State signee also grabbed 6 rebounds and a game high 5 steals to lead the Cougars’ 14 total thefts within the 23 Red Raven turnovers.
Despite being out-rebounded by 11, Barton made up for it by outscoring Coffeyville by ten points in the paint including plus-11 in fastbreak points and plus-12 in points off turnovers.
Trenton Ruth’s 19 points off the bench led Coffeyville as Daniel Ntambwe added 15 points and a team high 9 rebounds. Brian Griffith, the team’s season scoring leader, was held to just two points and twelve below his average on a 1-of-8 shooting night.
