Flashbacks to old school Jayhawk Conference basketball broke out at the Barton Gym Saturday afternoon with the Barton Community College men’s basketball coming out on the short end of a 79-77 battle with Seward County Community College. Trailing by eighteen points in the contest, the Cougars battled back through the midst of four combined technical fouls taking a late three-point lead before dropping its third straight loss. Barton falls to 6-4 in the rugged Jayhawk and 14-7 overall while the nationally receiving votes Saints improve to 6-4 and 16-5 on the season. The Cougars will look to snap its skid on Wednesday as Barton travels to Cloud County Community College for an 8:00 p.m. tip in Concordia.
Just as they had Wednesday night in Hutchinson, Seward County came out red hot knocking down three consecutive three-pointers in building an 18-4 lead causing Barton to burn two timeouts in the game’s first four minutes. Going on to drain two more long balls, the Saints went 5-of-9 beyond the arc and shot 72% from the field increasing the lead out to fifteen at 31-16 going into the 8:38 first half media timeout.
The Cougars began to build momentum on the flip side of the timeout cutting the lead to twelve on an Ezekiel Charles alley-oop pass to Dequandre Dentmond. Charles then went on a personal five point run highlighted by a emphatic follow-up jam rebounding a missed three-pointer then one possession later drained a trey in from of the Seward bench to cut the deficit to 40-37 with 2:40 to play. However the Saints countered back holding off the surge outscoring the Cougars by five the rest of the way to take a 49-41 intermission lead.
