{"id":537086,"date":"2026-03-13T05:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T05:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/537086\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T05:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T05:12:12","slug":"barton-boys-basketball-wins-first-2a-state-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/537086\/","title":{"rendered":"Barton boys basketball wins first 2A state championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After a week filled with chaos, Barton Bears boys basketball took care of business on the court by winning their first 2A state championship.<\/p>\n<p>HOT SPRINGS, Ark. \u2014 The week leading up to a state title game will always be a nervy one, but this was something entirely different for Barton.<\/p>\n<p>The Bears&#8217; state semifinal game with England ended in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thv11.com\/article\/news\/local\/school-officials-police-involved-fight-arkansas-high-school-basketball\/91-546dc78d-bb3f-454f-a41a-75978b2ea872\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">massive brawl<\/a>, which resulted in a total of 12 ejections and suspensions.<\/p>\n<p>While the Bears entered Thursday&#8217;s 2A sate championship game missing five players, they didn&#8217;t miss a beat, jumping out to a 20-point halftime lead over Mt. Vernon-Enola.<\/p>\n<p>The second half was even more lopsided, as the Bears shot over 70% from the field on their way to an 89-44 victory to capture the school&#8217;s first boys basketball sate championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Christian Williams was named the state championship game MVP for scoring 22 points and adding 3 assists.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After the game, head coach Chris Williams addressed the media and expressed excitement for his team.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Last week, that wasn&#8217;t us, that&#8217;s not Barton basketball. People try to paint this picture because of another school&#8230;these guys showed that they&#8217;re the best team in 2A tonight by far,&#8221; he explained.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a week filled with chaos, Barton Bears boys basketball took care of business on the court by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-537086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}