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Too little, too late for Broncbusters in comeback bid against No. 16 Dragons

Published 1/19/2010 in Sports

By BRETT MARSHALL

bmarshall@gctelegram.com

Kris Baumann arrived at the Perryman Athletic Complex late Monday afternoon in advance of his Garden City Community College men's basketball team's Jayhawk Conference West Division battle with No. 16-ranked Hutchinson.

In his own words, Baumann was, "excited, I wanted to see how we'd play."

With his defending Region 6 champion squad struggling for much of the season to find consistency, Baumann was encouraged by his team's victory Saturday night against Colby.

The encouragement was short-lived, however, as the Broncbusters, despite a career-high 35 points and what is believed to be a school, perhaps conference record, nine 3-pointers by sophomore Chris McHenry, the visiting Dragons escaped with a 68-64 victory that in many ways the score disguised how the home team performed.

"This is a huge downer for me," Baumann said afterward. "We had a chance. I'm happy with the effort in our comeback."

Indeed, the Busters appeared to have been on the ropes with 4:39 to go and trailing 61-47 to a freshman-laden Blue Dragon team. In the span of 1 minute, 10 seconds, the Busters went on an 8-1 run that included a 3-pointer and a free throw by McHenry, a follow-up shot by Bobby Wesley and a lay-up by Mike Morales. That trimmed the deficit to 62-55 with 3:29 to play.

"You can't play bad for 35 minutes and then try to make a comeback to win," said Baumann, whose team is now 10-8 overall and 1-3 in the Jayhawk Conference West.

There was still more to come, and most of it came from McHenry, the sophomore southpaw from Milwaukee.

He knocked down two free throws at the 3:03 mark and added 1-of-2 charities with 2:16 showing. He then buried a 25-foot jumper from the top of the key with 1:39 left and swished through two free throws at the 1:08 juncture and all of a sudden the Busters were only down 65-63.

"The most you can ask is to have a chance at the end and we did that," Baumann said. "But we've got to have more players step up than just Chris McHenry. He had a great, great effort, but the fact is we lost."

Garden's Eric Griffin came up with a big blocked shot at the 40 second mark and then came down with a chance to tie or take the lead. Travis Burley was fouled with 29.2 seconds remaining and he proceeded to miss the first free throw and make the second. It was now a 65-64 game.

Hutch's Joe Mitchell was fouled with 25.5 seconds and he calmly sank both of them to up the margin to 67-64. The Busters came down and everyone at Perryman knew they would try to get it in the hands of the red-hot McHenry. His potential game-tying trey with 14 seconds left hit the rim and bounced away and Hutch's Vince Banks picked up the loose ball and was promptly fouled with 5.7 seconds showing.

The team's leading scorer for the season, Banks proceeded to clang both free throws. Hutch was fouled on the rebound and Bruce Reed made the first of two charities to put the game out of reach. McHenry fired another deep three at the buzzer but it, too, just missed its mark. He would finish the game by hitting an incredible 9-of-14 treys, five in the first half and four in the second.

"As good a performance from behind the line as I've seen," Hutchinson first-year coach Steve Eck said of McHenry. "It's always tough coming out here to play Garden, so to get a win is good for Hutch."

The Blue Dragon win, in fact, was their first at Perryman since 2003.

For Baumann, however, the struggle with this team's personality and ability to follow their coach's instructions continued.

"I don't like getting out-coached and I don't enjoy the fact that the players don't listen to what we want them to do," Baumann said. "We were not in any flow tonight. We just stunk up the place."

The statistics would bear that out as the Busters hit just 20-of-58 field goals for 34.5 percent and they tanked at the free throw line as well (13-of-28, 46.4 percent). Conversely, Hutchinson canned 23-of-42 shots (12-of-19 in the second half) for 54.8 percent field goal effort. The Dragons did have problems at the free throw line as well, going just 16-of-31.

Garden turned the ball over 13 times to 16 for Hutchinson and the Busters had a 40-32 rebounding advantage with Burley and Griffin grabbing a game-high 11 boards. Hutchinson had four players in double figures, led by Reed with 14, James Stewart with 12 and Mitchell and Leon Flowers 10 each.

Garden goes on the road Wednesday night to face the Beavers in Pratt at 8 p.m.

------------

Hutchinson 68, Garden City 64

HUTCHINSON (16-2, 3-1) -- Frantz 2-3 1-4 6, Mithcell 2-5 6-9 10, Reed 4-8 5-6 14, Flowers 4-6 0-0 10, Davis 2-4 2-4 6, Stewart 4-9 2-4 12, Barrett 1-1 0-2 2, Roberts 1-2 0-0 2, Barnes 2-2 0-2 4, Holloman 0-0 0-0 0, Elhadji 1-2 0-0 2. Totals 23-42 16-31 68.

GARDEN CITY (10-8, 1-3) -- Morales 2-3 0-0 4, Jackson 1-8 0-0 2, McHenry 10-15 6-8 35, Wesley 1-3 2-4 4, Brown 1-2 0-0 3, Jirmnson 1-6 0-0 2, Griffin 2-6 1-2 5, Banks 1-6 2-5 5, Phillips 0-0 0-0 0, Cobb 0-4 0-5 0, Burley 1-5 2-4 2. Totals 20-58 13-28 64.

Halftime -- Hutchinson 29-28. 3-point goals -- Hutchinson 6-12 (Frantz 1-2, Reed 1-2, Flowers 2-3, Davis 0-1, Stewart 2-3, Roberts 0-1), Garden City 11-20 (McHenry 9-14, Wesley 0-1, Brown 1-2, Jirmnson 0-1, Banks 1-2). Rebounds -- Hutchinson 32 (Frantz 5, Reed 5, Stewart 5), Garden City 40 (Burley 11). Turnovers -- Hutchinson 17, Garden City 13. Assists -- Hutchinson 13 (Stewart 5), Garden City 7 (Wesley 4). Steals -- Hutchinson 5 (Davis 3), Garden City 7 (Griffin 3). Blocked Shots -- Hutchinson 9 (Reed 6), Garden City 7 (Griffin 2). Fouls -- Hutchinson 23, Garden City 25. Fouled out -- None.

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