There’s only three games left for the Barton Community College women’s basketball team before the NJCAA Region VI playoffs.
The Lady Cougars sit in the middle of the pack in fifth place in the standings with a 16-11 overall record, 6-7 in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference Western Division.
Saturday night at 6, Barton hosts Colby, which sits at seventh place in the standings with a record of 8-19 overall, 4-9 in the West.
“Right now, we’re in fifth place,” Barton head coach Darin Spence said, “and I think that that is as high as we’re going to be able to get. With Seward, Cloud and Garden are all one win away from 10. That would be out of our reach, and each of them have winnable games ahead of them.
“We were picked to win sixth, so that is at least a step up for us.”
In fifth place, the Lady Cougars will likely have a road game to start the Region VI playoffs. Of course, Barton has had more success on the road than it has at home in the conference with a road record of 4-3 and a home record of 2-4.
“We’re not scared of it, that’s for sure,” Spence said. “We’ve had success on the road, and we know what we can do. I think our side is better than the East side, and it’s prepared us for these games.
“You know, we’ve been able to go on the road and do some things, so I think we’re ready for a road game. We won’t be nervous about it or anything.”
Barton traveled to Colby on Jan. 25, with Barton winning 61-58 after Raven Anderson scored the go-ahead layup with 1:24 remaining.
“We were up big going into the second half, but we just shut it down and let them get back into it,” Spence said. “They’re big. They have a couple of 6-4 kids. They’re long. They’ve got an undersized kid that’s a hard matchup for us, but we’ve got to control the ball. That’s the bottom line. We can’t turn the ball over and beat ourselves.”
Dionne Harris leads the Lady Cougars with a 13.1 points per game average, as well as averaging 7.1 rebounds per game.
Blair Bloomfield averages 9.2 points per game.
Barton averages 20.6 turnovers per game, something that Spence says has to stop.
“I think we’re playing the best ball we’ve played all season right now,” Spence said. “You know, we’ve played pretty solid defense all year. We can score points and we’re getting quite a few rebounds. We just have to control the ball. We can’t turn the ball over. We just need to make sure we get our shots in.”
Colby is led by Liga Vente, who averages 12.7 points and 8.6 rebounds per game.