RELATED STORIES

• Holiday basketball tournament pairings
• NDN Gulfshore Notebook: Ensworth coach taking extra load
• NDN Gulfshore Shootout: Gaynor leads Mandarin over Gulf Coast
• NDN Gulfshore Shootout: Naples can't recover from another poor start
• NDN Gulfshore Shootout: Woods' return sparks Golden Gate to win

More BCHS Basketball

• Boys basketball: Naples, Barron Collier move game scheduled for Friday
• Prep basketball: Seahawks boys, girls split against Barron, Gulf Coast
• Prep boys basketball season preview: Team-by-team capsules

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Share and Enjoy [?]

Barron Collier is perfect no more.

One of the most surprising prep stories in Southwest Florida this winter came to an end with the Cougars’ 66-48 loss to Bartow in the second round of the Naples Daily News Gulfshore Shootout on Friday.

Now, coach Bryan Crislip said, he gets to see what his team’s truly made of.

“These kids have never been a target,” the Cougars’ first-year coach said after his team fell to 15-1. “Now they have to face adversity. Not to take anything away from the teams around here, but the teams here are way more athletic, they’re faster, quicker than what we’ve seen. Now (that we’ve lost), we get to see what we’ve really got.”

For three quarters, the Cougars looked like they had plenty against a Bartow team that was taller, quicker and had a handful of players who could likely jump right out of Golden Gate’s gym.

But no sooner had Crislip warned his team during a third quarter timeout, “They’ll blow you out of the water if you let them,” did Terrence McGriff’s team truly lower the periscopes.

Bartow blew a close game open with a 24-4 second half run, a stretch in which Jamal Lawson (16 points) and Vincent Reid (9) took over under the basket, while Marlon Austin (12) slashed his way to nine fourth quarter points.

The fact that the Cougars went 4-of-18 from the free throw line sure didn’t help, neither did the early foul trouble of leading scorer Brian Landers, who was held to nine points, or an oft-broken press that gave Bartow clean looks underneath.

“The first two quarters, we did good,” Crislip said, “then when we got down, we put our heads in a shell. Like a turtle. They were scared and they backed down instead of being aggressive. They got into (our heads) and we flat-out gave up.”

Barron jumped ahead in a flash and led 17-9 after one, but then the Cougars slipped into a scoring funk that saw them go four minutes, 54 seconds between field goals. Over that stretch, the Yellow Jackets went on a 7-0 run that helped them cut the lead to two, at 23-21, at halftime.

Bartow took its first lead since the opening quarter with just under seven minutes in the third, when the second of three straight Lawson buckets inside made it 25-23. Barron answered with a 6-0 flurry on back-to-back 3-pointers by Alexi Lowry (9 points) and Matty Baker (7), but Bartow responded just as quickly.

Terriss Stevenson’s second 3-pointer of the quarter was part of a 14-2 run that gave the Yellow Jackets’ a 47-40 cushion heading into the fourth, and Bartow cruised from there.

The Yellow Jackets move on to play Nashville (Tenn.) Ensworth in a semifinal on Saturday at 5:45 p.m., while the Cougars look to rebound against another athletic team, Homestead South Dade, in a consolation game on Saturday at 12:30 p.m.

“If we give the same effort against South Dade,” Crislip said, “they’ll kill us.”

BARTOW (66)

Stevenson 5 0-0 13, Samarrpas 1 0-0 3, Lawson 8 0-2 16, Murvin 3 3-4 10, Reid 3 3-4 9, Austin 5 2-4 12, Montgomery 1 1-2 3, Thomas 0 0-0 0, Garvin 0 0-0 0. Totals: 26 9-16 66.

BARRON COLLIER (48)

Lowry 3 2-2 9, Gilbert 0 0-0 0, Medley 2 0-0 5, Gonzalez 3 1-3 7, Stephenson 0 1-6 1, Landers 3 0-0 9, Smith 0 0-0 0, Humphrey 5 0-5 10, Baker 2 1-2 7. Sanchez 0 0-0 0. Totals: 19 4-18 48.

Bartow 9 12 26 19 — 66

Barron Collier 17 6 17 8 — 48

Three-pointers — Bartow 5 (Stevenson 3, Samarippas, Murvin), BC 5 (Landers 3, Lowry, Medley); Team Fouls — BC 17, Bartow17; Fouled out — none; Technicals — none.