Young Lady Longhorns pushing through early season adversity

MEETEETSE - For any young basketball team the early season brings its fair share of trials and tribulations and for the Meeteetse High School girls basketball team the first two weeks of the season has been exactly that.

With one senior, three juniors, two sophomores, and three freshmen the Lady Longhorns (1-3) first four games have provided plenty of adversity. In those games they've averaged 18.75 points per game while opponents have averaged 47 points per game.

While the scoring averages look bleak, for MHS girls basketball coach Dale Query he's encouraged and knows this team will get better as the season move on.

"The kids have great attitudes, are excited to play, working hard and willing to do what's asked of them," said coach Query.

Going into the Christmas break Query will have his team working on taking care of the basketball and as well as shoring up their defensive fundamentals.

"We're a young team and right now we're in the process of becoming fundamentally sound. So our biggest problem has been turnovers and during the break we're going to work on being fundamentally sound, with good passes being strong with the ball and then breaking presses," said coach Query. "We went against two very good 2A teams and a good 1A team and all of them pressed us and we weren't ready for it. I'm assuming that will be the norm and we'll have to get better at that."

Coach Query added, "Being better on help-side, staying low with our hands up. Fundamentally we're weak defensive-wise and that's another area we'll look to correct. We haven't played a whole lot of basketball and over the break we'll work on understanding where we need to be on the court."

The Lady Longhorns return junior Matilynn May the team's leading scorer from last season with 14.6 points per game. Coach Query still wants to use May's offensive prowess but would also like to see others on the team help out with the scoring.

"She's kind of been the lone ranger of the team," said coach Query when speaking about May. "She's a good player but this year we're trying to make her be a part of the offense rather than be the offense. I want to spread it out rather than putting the offensive responsibility on her shoulders."

With the tough start to the season the Lady Longhorns are going to treat those games like a rookie NFL QB throwing an interception, by learning from the mistakes and moving forward.

"Really it's about learning from our mistakes that way we're not making the same mistakes. I've told them it is fine to make a mistake, I just want them to learn from each turnover so that they don't continue doing the same thing. As long as we get better day after day so once we get to regionals we'll be at the top of our game," said coach Query.

The first two games out of the break for Meeteetse will be against Lovell JV and Arapahoe on Jan. 5 and 6 and both will be a good way to test the team's improvement.

"We have a pretty good schedule coming out of the break. We have Lovell JV and Arapahoe and those are pretty winnable games and ones that we need to be competitive in. That's where we need to get and see what improvement we've made during the break. We need to be competing with teams. I will have to really give it to our girls we went to Shoshoni and played three really good teams and got beat pretty bad. But our mentality was let's learn from these games and focus on improving, and the girls attitudes were great and I was encouraged about that," said coach Query.

As far as what identity he envisions for the 2016-2017 Lady Longhorns basketball team, coach Query said, jokingly, "Goofy. They're a fun group to coach. As the assistant football coach I was in charge of the conditioning and they knew I liked to run. So I've been pushing them and they're all about it and loving it. If I were to tell them to run through a brick wall they'd run through two of them. That's how this team is, they're going to give everything they have to improve and get to where we need to be. I'm excited and we're starting from ground zero and I knew starting out we were going to behind but they're working hard and these girls are going to get better each day."