The Barton Community College baseball team picked up a conference doubleheader sweep Wednesday at Colby Community College. The Cougars got a pair of solid starting pitching performances behind sophomore Jordan Plank to win 3-1 and freshman Cody Brewer in game two getting the help of the Barton bats pounding out twelve hits in blasting the Trojans 9-4. Barton improves to 9-8 on the season and 4-2 in the Jayhawk West while dropping Colby to 7-9 on the season and 1-5 in the Jayhawk West. The Cougars will next head back to the road traveling to El Dorado, Kansas, for a weekend four-game series at Butler Community College. First pitch for each day’s doubleheader schedule for 1:00 p.m.
Evan McDonald had the lone multi-hit game one going 2-for-3 including a double to lead off the third eventually scoring pushing Barton’s lead out to 2-0. Lance White doubled home McDonald in the first inning after McDonald delivered a one-out single to center.
Barton increased the lead to three in the sixth inning as Josh Farrington delivered a two-out single to right scoring Trevor Turner who led off the inning with a single up the middle.
Plank, who improved to 5-0 on the season and lowered his ERA to 1.78, ran into some trouble in the home half of the inning as Colby strung together a single, double, and another single to cut the deficit to 3-1. Closing the books on Planks’ seven hit two strikeout with no walks performance, Alexander Evans gave up a hit but erased the two-on one-out situation with a strikeout and unassisted groundout to first baseman Grant Watkins to record his fourth save of the season.
Five Cougar players had multi-hit games including another solid game by McDonald going 3-for-4 in the two hole, as Jacob Richardson set the table at the top of the lineup with a 2-for-5 game scoring the first Cougar run off of Grant Watkins’ two-out single in the third.
Watkins went 2-for-5 in the game and was followed by the 2-for-4 performance of Lance White who had a RBI double in the Barton five-run third inning and capped his day with his second homerun of the season pushing the Cougar lead to 9-0 in the seventh.
Trevor Turner was 2-for-4 adding his one RBI in the fifth and Bryce Minor capped off the fifth with lone hit counting for a double to center scoring Turner.
Colby committed two errors in the Barton third inning but a leadoff single by Turner and a two-out double by Richardson gave the Cougars extra insurance runs.
Jackson Rose worked a near perfect eighth getting the help of a Farrington-McDonald-Watkins second double play of the game to end any Colby threat.
After a leadoff out, Colby got took advantage of a single and hit batsman by Shane Adams to score its first run on an infield error. Adams then struck another batter before consecutive singles generated three more runs to cut the Barton lead to five. Adams battled back to induce a harmless fly ball then struck out the final batter to seal the victory.
