After taking a short break, the Barton Community College women’s basketball team travels to Colby tonight for a game at 6.
The Lady Cougars, who are 12-7 overall, 2-3 in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference Western Division, haven’t played since they lost to Hutchinson 75-51 last Wednesday.
Colby is 6-14, 2-4.
“I expect a solid basketball team that doesn’t beat themselves,” Barton head coach Darin Spence said. “They are competitive. They have good length. I think they have a couple of girls over (6-foot-4), and they don’t try to fool you. They just play hard basketball.
“We both have two wins in league play. We’re both playing to stay in the top four in the league, so they’re going to be hungry.”
Colby’s Katarina Popovic is 6-5 and Liga Vente is 6-4.
Vente leads the Lady Trojans averaging 12.8 points and 8.8 rebounds per game.
Marie McAbee, a 5-9 sophomore, averages 12.0 points per game.
Spence said that the extra time off was helpful.
“We had to get our bumps and bruises healed up,” Spence said. “It was kind of an active rest. We didn’t just stop working. We’ve been working on our execution.
“We’ve been working on a defensive alignment, and controlling the ball. We had an early practice on Saturday, so they almost had two full days off.”
Dionne Harris leads the Lady Cougars averaging 13.8 points and 7.7 rebounds per game.
“Dionne’s been Dionne,” Spence said of his team’s leader during practice. “She keeps working hard. She wants to be good. She wants to lead us.
“She’s still battling her problems with her feet. It makes her less aggressive. Now that she’s been able to take a couple of days off, it has helped her.”
Blair Bloomfield averaged 8.9 points per game, and Shea Shoemaker is averaging 8.6 points.
Ta’Kerra Williams made it back onto the court after suffering a knee injury. The 5-9 forward played a few minutes against Hutchinson.
Freshman Jennifer Allende, a 5-5 guard who graduated from Great Bend High School, is out for the season after having surgery to repair her knee.
“(Williams) had reinjured her knee a couple of weeks back,” Spence said. “She has been slowly getting better. It’s tough when you miss action, but she’s been working hard to get back into playing shape.
“Losing (Allende), that’s hurt us. She’s a tough kid who competed for us. She worked hard off the bench for us. She worked really hard on defense.”