GREAT BEND, Kan. – Facing a 70 percent three-point shooting barrage, the Cloud County Community College men's basketball team fell flat in a 93-60 road loss to Barton Community College inside the Kirkman Center in Great Bend, Kansas on Saturday, February 20th.
Falling to 4-4 overall, Cloud County is now 2-4 in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference while Barton bounces back from Wednesday's road loss at Butler to improve to 3-4 overall and 2-4 in the KJCCC.
The hot shooting for the Cougars would be evident from the start as Cloud County would take their first and only lead of the game on their opening possession on a David Acosta dunk before allowing BCC to score the next 12 points to go up double digits five minutes into the first half. Needing to try and match the scoring output, the T-Birds would get a transition three from freshman Travis Beetch to kick start a 7-0 run that would see the deficit cut to four at 16-12 at the midway point of the opening period. Following a Barton timeout, the Cougars would go on to hit back-to-back triples on their next two possessions split by a Savian Edwards layup as the lead would be pushed back out to double-digits on an offensive putback by Asanti Price with 8:16 left in the first half. As the remainder of the first half would play out, things would go from bad to worse for the T-Birds as Barton continued their hot shooting to grab a 44-26 halftime lead thanks in part to an 81.8 percent (nine-of-11) three-point effort in the first 20 minutes.
Cloud County would manage to score five of the first seven points over the course of the first two minutes of the second half, but the Cougars would manage to flip the script over the next 90 seconds to push their lead back out 50-33 after four minutes of action in the half. The long-range shooting from Barton would continue as CCCC would have no answer on the offensive end for the hot shooting as the Cougar lead would grow to as many as 36. With the odds of a comeback growing more and more unlikely as the game comeback continued, the T-Birds start to rotate players in and out while trying to limit the damage any more knowing that five games are scheduled to be played by Cloud County over the next two weeks.
Barton would officially end the game by going 14-of-20 from beyond the arc to finish with a 52.5 percent (32-of-61) performance from the field while also connecting on 15-of-17 (88.2 percent) free throws. CCCC would be limited to just 28.6 percent (eight-of-28) shooting in the second half to finish the game 19-of-56 (33.9 percent) from the floor while also struggling from three (four-of-14) and the charity stripe (18-of-29).
Cloud County would only have two players reach double-figures as Frierson and Ibrahim Drame would both score 10 points and grab five rebounds. Barton was led by a career-best 29 points from Willie Lapoole as the sophomore scored 29 points which included a six-of-seven mark from deep.
What's Next?
The T-Birds will need a short memory to prepare for Monday's KJCCC East division opener as CCCC will host Butler at 8 p.m. BCCC was on the road Saturday in Goodland, Kansas and earned a 72-58 win over the Mavericks to improve to 7-2 overall and 5-2 in the KJCCC.
