Archive for the 'Girls Basketball' Category
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
State hoops: Too patient?
The Cheyenne East girls used a stalling offense with four minutes to play in the fourth quarter of their 54-40 semifinal win over Sheridan. The Thunderbirds led by just five and Sheridan was more than content to sit back and let them whittle time off the clock.
That surprised East.
“We really thought they were going to start fouling after we ran that offense the first time,” T-Birds junior Meghan Sipe said.
Considering how poorly East has been shooting from the free throw line recently, it probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea to turn the final minutes into a free-throw shooting contest.
However, East knocked down its last eight free throws Friday. That included six in a row in the final 50 seconds to put the game away.
“We’ve really been struggling with free throws and it’s good to finally step up, especially in a situation where the pressure was really on,” Sipe added.
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
State hoops: Lucero injury
Cheyenne East may be without senior point guard Seneca Lucero when it takes on Laramie in the Class 4A girls state championship game. She badly injured her left ankle in Friday’s 54-40 semifinal win over Sheridan. She returned briefly in the second quarter, but sat out the remainder of the game.
“It’s pretty tender, but you have to hand it to (Lucero) for trying to come back into the game,” first-year East coash Rusty Horsley said.
Sophomore Savannah Minder filled in quite well for her in the brief time she played Friday. Minder played more than seven minutes, but Horsley made no substitutions in the second half.
“She’s a tough kid too,” Horsley said of Minder. “She came in and hit a nice little jump shot and did some good things. She played as hard as she could defensively.”
Friday, March 12th, 2010
State hoops: Beasts from the East
I’ve blogged before about how dominant the Class 4A East Conference was in girls basketball and there was no better evidence to back my point than what happened today in the first round of the state tournament.
The East (Cheyenne East, Laramie, Sheridan and Gillette) went 4-0 against the West (Star Valley, Rock Springs, Evanston and Casper Natrona County). The East outscored the West 233-156 and the average margin of victory was 19.25 points.
Case closed.
Conversely, the West boys held a 3-1 edge on the East. Gillette was the only East Conference entry to move to the semifinals. However, the West boys only outscored the East boys by an average of four points per game. The only game that got out of hand was Rock Springs’ 61-42 win over East No. 2 seed Sheridan.
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Under pressure
The Gillette girls haven’t been left out of the Class 4A state tournament for who knows how long … maybe even as long as standout junior Jordan Kelley has been alive. Needless to say, the Lady Camels felt a little pressure entering Thursday night’s loser-out reigonal contest with Cheyenne Central. They also felt a little relief after that 57-44 victory.
“Obviously, we didn’t want to be the team that didn’t make the state tournament,” Kelley said. “It was just a lot of motivation this week. We were really anxious to play.”
The Camels face top-ranked Cheyenne East in tonight’s regional semifinal game. East has beaten Gillette twice this season.
“We just have to play hard the whole time and not give up anything easy,” Kelley said. “We’ve been ahead of them. Once mistake has led to another, we got down and it’s been hard to catch up. We just need to maintain our intensity and not let one mistake lead to another.”
Friday, February 26th, 2010
Unpublished prep preview
Every now and then the WTE sports staff is a little too prolific for its own good and we produce way more copy than we have space in our section. Such was the case yesterday. As a result, the following “prep preview” had to be left out of Friday’s WTE because we didn’t have room for it.
Its ticket to state already is punched, but that doesn’t mean the Cheyenne East girl basketball team is content to rest on its laurels.
In fact, the No. 1-ranked Lady Thunderbirds want nothing less than to end their season by extending their current 16-game winning streak to 23 – two more regular season wins and then the five necessary to win a state title.
East (19-2 overall, 8-0 Class 4A East Conference) puts that streak on the line when it plays at fourth-ranked Gillette (15-6, 4-4) at 7:30 tonight. It closes out the regular season at Sheridan (12-8, 3-5) at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
“Now that we’ve won our conference, we, as coaches, hope the kids will relax a little bit and we’ll see a little more out of them,” first-year coach Rusty Horsley said. “We’ve been a little bit tight offensively and not executing as well as we need to early in the past six or seven games.
“We’ve been getting off to slow starts, but they usually work it out. The kids are still working their tails off; we just hope they’ll relax a little more.”
Cheyenne Central (15-6, 4-4) can lock up third place with a sweep this weekend. It travels to Sheridan for a 7:30 p.m. tip-off tonight and to Gillette at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
Boys basketball
The first scenario for Cheyenne East (14-6, 6-2) is simple: beat Gillette and Sheridan and lock up sole possession of the No. 2 seed at next weekend’s Class 4A East Regional and a berth at state.
But should the fourth-ranked T-Birds fall to No. 1 and unbeaten Gillette and beat second-ranked Sheridan, they would have the same league mark as Sheridan, forcing a series of tiebreakers.
The Broncs might own the edge in that scenario based on the highest ranking opponent from the other 4A conference at a common site.
Sheridan downed Rock Springs in Rock Springs; East lost there.
The task of pulling the sweep was made a little tougher this week when sophomore guard Nikko Johnson was suspended for what coach Damon Artery calls an internal disciplinary issue.
Johnson – who leads the T-Birds in points (12.6), assists (3.2) and steals (2.6) per game – should be back for next weekend’s regional, Artery said.
East hosts Gillette (20-0, 8-0) at 7:30 tonight and Sheridan (14-6, 6-2) at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
Cheyenne Central (8-12, 1-7) plays the opposite schedule.
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Laramie girls 42, Cheyenne Central 32
Central trimmed Laramie’s eight-point third-quarter lead to one midway through the fourth before junior Amber Vandiver scored back-to-back buckets to help Laramie hold off Central. Vandiver finished with a team-best nine points.
Central was led by senior Katelyn Means’ 13 points and five rebounds. She was 5-for-6 from the free-throw line and scored seven of her points in the fourth quarter.
For more of this story, see Saturday’s Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Cheyenne East girls 58, Cheyenne Central 38
The Thunderbirds improved to 17-2 overall and 6-0 in the Class 4A East Conference with its second consecutive 20-point victory over its crosstown rivals.
Central held two separate six-point leads in the first half, but East was able to turn the tables and took a 24-22 lead into the locker room at halftime. The T-Birds opened the second half with an 11-2 run and never looked back.
Senior Breanna Johnson fronted East with 15 points and four steals, while junior post Meghan Sipe chipped in with 12 points. Senior Jazmyn Webster added eight points and nine rebounds for East.
The Indians (14-5, 3-2) were led by senior post Katelyn Means’ 15 points. Nine of those came in the first half.
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Poll politics
I’ve said it before on this blog and I’ll say it again, I take my role as a voter in the WyoPreps.com polls very seriously. I weigh a lot of factors when deciding how to slot teams, including head-to-head results and my impressions of that team when I saw them live. I know the polls don’t serve as anything except fodder for discussion, but I still make every effort to put forth a vote I can easily explain — and maybe even defend.
Watching the Class 4A girls poll in recent weeks, it has become abundantly clear some folks have different criteria and maybe even agendas. I don’t know how else you explain one voter ranking Rock Springs first and Cheyenne East fifth.
East has earned the top spot in my poll because it hasn’t lost to a Wyoming team this winter. It’s earned the top spot in my poll because it’s beaten six of the seven teams receiving votes by a very wide margin (the Lady Thunderbirds haven’t played sixth-ranked Casper Natrona County). It’s earned my vote because it has won 13 consecutive outings, including a 66-31 demolition of Rock Springs. East’s average score against the teams ranked in this week’s top 5 (Laramie, Rock Springs, Gillette and Cheyenne Central) has been 66.75-45.75.
If those aren’t the results of a clear-cut and unanimous No. 1, I don’t know what are.
WyoPreps revealed this week that it’s going to discontinue distributing a poll breakdown come soccer season. That breakdown includes how many points each team received from voting and a breakdown of how many first through fifth place votes each team received. I’m disappointed in that decision because makes it impossible to notice horrible discrepancies such as this.
Yes, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that opinion becomes little more than a joke when the facts heavily sway the argument in the other direction.
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
Power conference
A few years ago I wrote a column about how much of a meat grinder the Class 4A East Conference was in girls basketball. It’s abundantly clear the power still lies in the East with four of the league’s six teams ranked in this week’s WyoPreps.com poll.
The difficulty of winning games in the league was further illustrated tonight when Cheyenne Central topped second-ranked Gillette 67-57. Central is by no means a bad team, but it was unranked and has been struggling as of late. It would have come as no surprise if the Camels had beaten Central. Instead, Gillette suffered its second consecutive conference loss. That after having won 21 of 22 league games (and 12 straight) dating back to the 2007-08 season.
“You have to come ready to play every single night in this conference,” said first-year East coach Rusty Horsley who was an assistant under East’s previous staff. “(Casper) Kelly Walsh took Gillette into overtime and they’re still winless in the conference. Everybody is good. The kids are going to have to show up to play.”
Being ready to play means not worrying about what the other teams are doing, East senior Kelli Cordell said.
“You can’t score watch, though, because everyone is beating everyone else,” she said. “You just have to worry about playing your game and doing your best rather than worrying what the other team might be playing like at that time.”
Monday, January 18th, 2010
Hometown heroes Part 1
Occasionally, we’ll do a feature called Hometown Heroes where we catch up with a former area high-school athlete having success at the college level. Obviously, we can’t always remember every area athlete, what school they’re at and what sport they’re playing.
Here’s the list of local athletes playing college basketball that I came up with off the top of my head.
Jasmine Belin, Cheyenne East, Casper College
Desmond Blue, Cheyenne Central, Lee University (Cleveland, Tenn.)
Seth Ganison, Cheyenne East, redshirting at Laramie County Community College
Lindsey Fearing, Cheyenne Central, Casper College
Tyler Kimzey, Pine Bluffs, Laramie County Community College
Lara Merritt, Cheyenne East, University of Northern Colorado (Greeley)
Tom Parks, Cheyenne Central, Youngstown State University (Ohio)
Kaleb Rehmer, Cheyenne East, South Dakota School of Mines (Rapid City)
Trey Stephens, Cheyenne Central, Presentation College (Aberdeen, S.D.)
Travis Werner, Pine Bluffs, redshirting at Laramie County Community College
Did I miss anybody?