Warriors regroup after loss heading into 3A state tournament

BUFFALO - The Worland Warriors had their 14-game winning streak snapped Saturday night vs. the Douglas Bearcats in the 3A East regional championship at Buffalo High School.

As the score gives away the Warriors fell 40-35 in overtime to the Bearcats in a hard-fought, defensive battle. After scoring a total of four points in the first quarter the Warriors clawed their way back into the game with their defense. They even held Douglas scoreless for a 10-minute stretch from part of the second quarter into the third quarter.

"I told them we played our hearts out, the defense worked hard and it was a good lesson for us. If we have a bad quarter at the state tournament we know that not all is lost," said WHS boys basketball coach Aaron Abel.

Senior big man Cody Baumstarck was a force down low pulling down 20 boards and scoring 20 points. Along with playing strong defense, when the Warriors started to get the ball down low to Baumstarck things began to turnaround in the game.

"In the second quarter we did better and went back to going inside. Cody (Baumstarck) had a couple of nice finishes, one was an impressive and-one," said coach Abel. "We also stopped turning the ball over which gave Douglas a lot of easy points in the first quarter."

With less than a minute left in the game the Warriors were down 29-26 until sophomore guard Elijah Leyva hit a 3-pointer to tie the game and eventually sending it to overtime.

In overtime the Warriors were not able to out punch the Bearcats and had to settle with a second-place finish.

The loss comes at a good time for the Warriors because heading into the final week of play a single loss will close the door on their 3A state title defense.

"The good news is that we showed even against some of the best teams in the state we can have one bad quarter and still overcome it. On the other hand our ball movement was really bad. Part of that could be due to Clay (Bullard) being hurt and not having that second capable ball handler," said Abel. "We felt like we did not move the ball like we needed to and it stuck a lot in our offense. We weren't getting the ball inside which was our priority. We did nothing that really threatened (Douglas') defense much other than we'd attack off the bounce right away.

Abel added, "Our offense is at its best with a lot ball movement by getting it inside or moving it side to side. That's when we're really clicking offensively and when we're not we make it pretty easy to guard us. That was the case for us against Douglas, especially in the first quarter."

The Warriors wanted to extend their winning streak and claim the regional championship. Yet, at the same time the big goal is about bringing the 3A state title back to Worland for the second season in a row.

"We haven't been able to finish off the regional tournament with that victory. We always want to win and we're not worried about what side of the bracket we'll be on at state, but (regionals) is not the one we really worry about either. We did what we went there to do and got to the state tournament," said Abel.

Ultimately, Abel believes the loss is going to help the Warriors as they prepare to defend their state championship.

"At the same time I thought it was good for us because we haven't been in a close game in over a month. Then we got into two really tough games. One worked out where we held on to win against Buffalo. The other we came from behind and forced overtime but didn't finish it off the right way," said Abel. "We hadn't lost in 14 games. So having that experience of being in close games was good, because we hadn't experienced a loss in a long time."

Abel continued, "For us things were getting worse and worse for us on the offense. That loss really opened up the guys' eyes to what we were doing poorly on that end of the floor. We just had not been sharing the ball as well as we have been. Any time you lose something like that you can talk about it after a win and the guys will listen but it doesn't really sink in. After a loss I think those lessons get learned a lot better."

The Warriors go into the state tournament as the No. 2-seed out of the East and are matched up with the No. 3-seed out of the West the Pinedale Wranglers.

No matter what happens during the final three days of the season Abel and his coaching staff have been stressing the importance composure.

"You can't control the event but you can always control your response. That's what we're trying to get our kids to realize as we go into this last week," said Abel.