No. 1 Douglas runs past No. 3 Warriors

DOUGLAS - Last season the Warriors ended their season with a win over Douglas in the state championship. Starting the 2016-2017 the defending champs opened the season with their conference rival and early 3A state contender. The Bearcats weathered an early challenge for the Warriors then quickly kept adding to the lead on their way to a 77-35 win.

Douglas jumped out to a quick 5-0 lead during the first quarter but Worland answered right back with a 3-pointer by senior Isaias Terrazas and a field goal by junior Jadon Swalstad to trail the Bearcats 7-5.

As the first quarter wound down the Warriors looked to be getting their rhythm as senior Cody Baumstarck scored two straight baskets followed by a 3-pointer by Keeton Paumer giving the Warriors a 12-11 lead. But a turnover led to a Douglas 3-pointer then as the final seconds were ticking off Douglas hit another 3-pointer.

"I thought we battled well in the first quarter," said coach WHS boys basketball coach Aaron Abel. "The kids did well with executing our defensive game plan and we even took the lead. The final 30 seconds we had two miscues that led to those 3-pointers but overall they did well."

The second quarter is when things began to unravel for the Warriors as turnovers and poor offensive possessions allowed for Douglas to take a commanding lead and never look back.

"It was a little bit of everything for us. You could tell most of the Douglas kids played football and most of our guys didn't. When it comes to conditioning in the early part of the season it really matters because you enter the season with more of a conditioning base. You could also tell they put a lot of work in the summer and they're already gelling," said coach Abel.

The Warrior guards struggled from the second quarter on as the Bearcats brought a relentless and intense pressure, forcing turnovers and converting them into points.

"Our guards struggled playing against a hyper active team," said coach Abel. "It seemed like there were seven guys out on the floor. We kept turning the ball over that resulted in easy points for them. We call those turnovers for touchdowns, they're basically a four-point swing and it happened to us at least 10 times and the game got away from us."

Moving on after a disappointing start to the season, coach Abel is looking for his younger guys to step it up and will look to find the best way to better prepare them for pressure like they saw tonight.

"I need to do a better job of preparing them of handling the man-to-man pressure. You could tell as our legs started to go our passes started to get a little sloppier. But we're a work in progress and showed glimpses of that against Douglas, said coach Abel. "Our conditioning needs to be better and we have to control the tempo better than we did tonight. We'll also need to find the younger guys we can trust. We went six deep tonight and they went about nine deep. Our younger guys will have to show us in practice and the JV games that they're willing to work hard, play defense and be under control."

Even with Friday night going poorly, coach Abel believes this team is capable of turning things around and making this game look like an outlier.

"There are things we can build off and we will get a lot better as the season goes on. The boys realize how good a team they played tonight and we made them look better than they really are with our miscues. They know if we get to where we need to be, we can be right there but now we need to turn our attention to Monday's practice and cut the turnovers down, play better defensively and not give has many paint touches," said Abel.

Worland will be in action next week as the travel to Green River for the Flaming Gorge tournament on Dec. 15-17.