The Barton Community College Cougars basketball team will travel to Arkansas City to play Cowley tonight, opening NJCAA Region VI play and face another team that loves to shoot the 3.
Tipoff is set for 7 at Scott Auditorium on the Cowley campus.
Only four teams in the region have more 3-pointers this year than Cowley, and no one has shot it better. Cowley shoots better than 40 percent on 3-pointers, hitting 203-502 on 3s.
Tyrus McGee is hitting 51 percent on 3-pointers, knocking down 104-206 — an average of 3.5 per contest.
The game will follow a Region VI women’s game between Cowley and Pratt.
The Cougars broke free from its overtime jinx Saturday night with an extra-time win at Kirkman Activity Center. Barton defeated Pratt 95-88 in Jayhawk West action in the regular season finale for both teams.
The win slotted Barton as the No. 7 seed in the West in the Region VI playoffs. Barton ends the West season at 7-9 and 19-11 overall while Pratt misses the playoffs with a 4-12 conference mark and a 13-17 overall record.
Overtime had not been kind this season with an 0-5 overtime record heading into Saturday. Four of those losses had come in Jayhawk West play and four had come on BCC’s home court. But this time Barton got it done, outscoring Pratt 17-10 in that extra session.
The two clubs traded the lead seven times in the overtime session. The seventh lead changed occurred with a DeVonte Grant 3-pointer off an assist from Jalen Boyd to give Barton an 89-87 lead with two minutes to play. Boyd and Grant would hook up one more time in a big way.
After the Beavers hit 1-of-2 free throws to cut the lead to 89-88, Boyd again fed Grant, who knocked down a shot from just inside the 3-point arc with a Pratt defender in his face as the shot clock expired. That gave Barton a 91-88 lead with just 43 seconds to play. Pratt had a shot to tie, but missed a 3-pointer. The Cougars would put the game away at the free-throw line as Colin Beatty and Adam Young each knocked down a pair of free throws in the final 32 seconds to close out the game.
Young had sent the game to overtime when he collected a rebound off a Boyd miss and put it back with 22 seconds left in regulation to tie the score at 78-all. Pratt’s Terry Taylor missed a 3-pointer with three seconds left that would have given the Beavers the win.
Ironically, that 30-second span to end regulation told a lot about the game as a whole — Young rebounding and scoring and the Beavers shooting 3-pointers. Young grabbed 15 rebounds in the win to go with 18 points while Pratt fired up 43 3-pointers – exactly 1/2 of its total shots.
Young’s double-double was his sixth this season — all coming in Jayhawk West play. Young has three consecutive double figure rebound games. He is averaging 10.6 rebounds per  game in West play. Colin Beatty joined Young as a double-double player with 14 points and 10 rebounds. Beatty also had five assists as did Young, Boyd, and Storm Sanders.
Dwayne Brunson scored 18 to lead the Cougars with Young. It was the 20th time in the last 21 games Brunson has scored in double figures. Former high school teammates Boyd and Grant also found double figures with 14 and 10.
Pratt was paced by an outstanding night from freshman Nikolas Skouen who drained 32 on the Cougars. Skouen knocked down 6-of-14 3-pointers as part of the Beaver barrage beyond the 3-point line. Pratt made 10-of-43 3-pointers and hit 31-of-86 overall. Justin Ikhide had a big night as well, hitting 8-of-10 from the field on his way to 19 points. Terry Taylor scored 17 but took 20 shots to do it, going 2-of-10 on 3s.