Explosive first half powers Cougars to season opening victory #GoBarton
Explosive first half powers Cougars to season opening victory.
The Barton Community College men's basketball team jumped out to an 11-0 lead and never looked back Wednesday afternoon at the Barton Gym in lighting up the scoreboard of their season opener with a 135-78 victory over the junior varsity squad from Ottawa University.
The Cougars begin conference play in a week as Barton travels to Independence Community College for a 7:00 p.m. tip at the Field House.
Barton led by twenty-three points midway through the opening half with eight players hitting the scoring column before adding thirteen more to the margin in cruising to the halftime break on a 71-35 advantage.
Outscoring the Braves 26-0 in fast break points in the first twenty minutes, much of the same continued in the second frame on a eighteen point margin as Barton would shoot 60.2% to Ottawa's 37.1%.
The big victory made an impact on a trio of program records in the second most field goals made (59), the fifth assists (35), and the sixth highest Cougar output for a single game.
All ten Cougars in uniform added six or more points to the total with Desean Munson's career high night twenty-seven points on 13-of-15 shooting leading five in double figures. Asanti Price buried three treys amongst his twenty-one point Cougar debut while Justin Harmon nearly recording a triple-double start to his sophomore campaign with twenty points and nine rebounds and nine assists. A pair of debuts also reached double digits as Tymer Jackson put up nineteen and Evans Kipruto posting his first collegiate double-double with fourteen points and ten rebounds.
Knocking down 6-of-7 behind the arc, Ryan Torrey led the Braves with twenty-six points, Ferlin Joseph with nineteen points and eight rebounds, and Tyler Trogstad adding thirteen to round out the Ottawa double-digit scoring.