For the second game in a row, the Barton Community College women’s basketball team lit up the scoreboard for more than 90 points on its way to a 91-74 victory over Southwestern JV on Monday night at the Kirkman Athletic Center.
The win gives the Cougars (6-6) a four-game winning streak going into their final game slated in December.
Offensively, the Cougars were alright. Barton shot 44.7 percent from the field.
It was the Cougars’ defense that had head coach Keith Ferguson worried.
“We were terrible defensively,” Ferguson said. “We don’t guard anybody very well. We let people take shots wherever they want to and we’ve got to work on that, because if we don’t, Cloud and Seward, you know, we’re going to go 0-2 to start conference if we don’t get better defensively.”
The Cougars gave the Moundbuilders 17 free throws in the first half. Southwestern was able to capitalize on 12 of them, keeping the score close.
“We were bad,” Ferguson said of the first half. “We started reaching. We let them get layups. We let them get high-percentage shots and we just didn’t take pride.
“A lot of them tried for steals like a lot of them did in high school and that doesn’t work here. They got to be better and more solid defensively. If we do that in conference, we’re in trouble.”
Netanya Jackson led the Cougars in scoring, coming off the bench to put up 20 points on her way to just missing her third double-double of the year with nine rebounds.
“We are doing our dribble-drive offense better,” Jackson said. “We’re making sure that when we’re driving, we’re driving into the lane and not just around.”
The Cougars took a 43-35 lead into halftime.
Southwestern scored first in the second half on a free throw and it looked as though nothing had changed from the first.
 “We just needed to execute better and play defense better,” Jackson said. “We just have to stop them from scoring as often. We’ve got to get tougher on defense. Instead of letting them do what they want, we’ve got to push them back.”
But freshman guard Christina Caddy, who finished the game with 17 points, six rebounds and four assists, lit a fire under the Cougars, rushing into the paint in the next possession, scoring two points on a layup and drawing the foul to complete the three-point play.
The Cougars began to pull away.
“We did a good job and we ran our stuff better in the second half,” Ferguson said. “I thought we guarded on a few more possessions than we did in the first half. We still didn’t guard for a whole 20 minutes, but we guarded more and that took the wind out of their sails, I think.”
It wasn’t until the 11-minute mark, when the Cougars struck with three 3-pointers and a three-point play to give Barton an 81-55 advantage.
Dione Harris scored 11 points, including four in the final minutes, on her way to her fourth double-double with 11 rebounds.