It was an historic moment at the Barton Gym Tuesday night. With an easy win over the McPherson JV, the Barton men’s basketball team posted its 1000th win in school history.
It was a moment not lost to Coach Craig Fletchall – who has been there for nearly one-quarter of those wins.
“Stuff like that is pretty neat,” Coach Fletchall said. “That is something to take pride in. We have a winning tradition at Barton and getting to a milestone like that says a lot.”
The win made Barton 1000-455 as a program over its 47-year history. That is an average of more than 21 wins a season. Coach Fletchall has now been part of 235 wins.
The game was never in doubt as Barton hammered McPherson, 124-72. Barton led 7-0 with just more than one minute gone. The Cougars pushed that lead to 18-2 four minutes in and 44-11 at the midway point of the opening half.
By half Barton was in cruise control, leading 72-30. The Cougars went over the century mark with 10:27 left
“We talked before the game about coming out and taking care of business early on,” Coach Fletchall said. “We certainly did that. You don’t like to have to play the JV’s but it does give everyone a chance to play good minutes. Everyone played double figure minutes and everyone scored.”
About the only thing that didn’t go right was an injury to Jordan Windholz. The Hays sophomore sprained his ankle and will be out for a while. He was the exception to the big minutes and scoring, getting hurt after playing just three minutes.
“It’s too bad Jordan got hurt,” Coach Fletchall said. “He just got back form an ankle injury and now he sprains the other ankle. He’s going to be out a while. That will hurt our perimeter shooting, he is our best shooter.”
Derek Dorn led the way for the Cougars. The sophomore point guard poured in 26 points on 9-of-13 shooting. Dorn hit 5-of-5 on 3-pointers. He had 22 points by halftime. Keith Mack added 19 points on 8-of-13 shooting as the Cougars his 61 percent from the floor in the win. Both were career highs.
All 10 Cougars – minus Windholz – scored at least seven points. Seven different Cougars scored double figures and eight of the 10 had at least one assist.
The contest was the first of four straight at home for Barton before tipping off the conference schedule. Hesston College will come to the Barton Gym Friday night for a 7:30 p.m. start.
Barton will host the Best Western/Booster Club Thanksgiving Classic Nov. 27-28. The Cougars will take on Northwest Kansas Tech and Brown Mackie those dates.
The Jayhawk Conference slate gets started Dec. 2 at Pratt.