Warriors scratch and claw their way to a 55-45 win over Cody

CODY — Getting their seventh win of the season was not easy but on Tuesday night at Cody High School, but the Worland Warriors basketball team found a way leave Cody as the 55-45 victor against the hometown Broncs.

“It felt like it was like us against the world out there as far as what we were up against. We had a lot of tough situations we had to fight through and we played great on the defensive end,” said WHS boys basketball coach Aaron Abel. [Cody’s] offense was out of rhythm all night and we held [Elijah] Leyva to 19 when he averages 27. Their other guys made a few shots for them but overall holding a team to 45, in our shoes, we should expect to dominate in that situation.”

Tuesday’s win was the first time since the first tournament of the season that the Warriors (7-5) have won back-to-back games, on Saturday they beat Lovell 45-34 at Lovell High School. But just like in their game against Lovell, Cody’s zone defense gave the Warriors fits on offense as they had 19 turnovers on the night.

“Again, it’s kind of a similar story offensively, the 2-3 zone caused us problems all night like it did in Lovell. Eventually, the word is going to get out that that’s what you want to do against Worland because of our struggles to shoot the ball and the amount of turnovers we have.

“We need to take care of the ball better, we need to beat the zone down the floor, make two guys guard one and get the ball into the paint area for open shots. Hopefully, we’ll start making open shots and I’m sure we’ll see a zone when we go down to Rawlins. They’ve been playing a 2-3 zone all year and we’ve got three days of practice to try and get better at it,” said Abel.

The first half definitely went in Cody’s favor as Worland struggled to find their rhythm on offense. Cody’s zone defense was part of the problem but Abel also thought that his team wasn’t being aggressive enough. There was some indecision which slows things down offensively and allows for the zone defense to get set.

But coming out of halftime trailing 23-13, the Warriors made some adjustments and were more aggressive in attacking the Broncs defense.

“It seems like we’re playing a little bit tentative. They were really guarding us on the perimeter and were kind of daring us to shoot and guys were hesitating. Shots weren’t falling but we weren’t being aggressive and weren’t attacking the zone very well.

“That got better in the second half, [assistant] coach [Wade] Wyman made a nice adjustment to put our bigs lower underneath the backboard, and that enabled Andrew [Edholm] and Bryan [Viktorin] to get going a little bit. Once their zone had to cover the paint that unlocked us and a couple of guys hit big shots for us. Rylan’s [Mocko] shot was big and so was Luke’s [Mortimer] perimeter shot. I was happy those two shots came up big for us and hopefully that will give them some confidence moving forward,” Abel said.

The Warriors battled back in the second half and the key stretch came when they went on a 10-0 run to close out the game. Tied 45-all with 1:35 remaining, junior Luke Mortimer knocked down a 3 to put Worland up 48-45. The following Worland possession, Rudy Sanford was fouled and went 2 for 2 at the free-throw line. Sanford then stole the ball on Cody’s next possession, got fouled on his way to the basket and to top it off a Bronc player received a technical foul after the play. The sophomore went 3 for 4 from the line giving Worland the 53-45 advantage.

Keeping the Warriors in the game, as their offense struggled to get going, was their defense. Mortimer once again drew the tough assignment of guarding 4A’s leading scorer Elijah Leyva. Averaging 27.3 points per game, Leyva was held to 19 points due to Mortimer defense. As a whole, Worland’s defense was effective at getting Cody out of rhythm and making the 32 minutes tough for them.

“I thought we consistently had a good effort challenging shots. Cody runs a lot of set plays and we defended their sets very well. Luke did a great job of fighting through screens all night. Then overall we did a good job of not letting Cody get the ball under the basket into the post area,” said Abel. “Those are the two things defensively I was impressed with. Cody’s offense looked out of sync all night long and I think that had a lot to do with how we were guarding them.”

Saturday Worland heads to Rawlins to face the Outlaws in a non-conference matchup. Along with trying to figure out the Outlaws zone, the Warriors have to deal with the Outlaws talented post player in Hunter Pixler. The returning All-State selection, will be a good challenge for the Warriors defense to shut down or at least limit his impact on the game.

“Coach Adler has run high-flex offense forever, I’m sure we’ll see some of that. They also have the best center in the state in Hunter Pixler who’s a 6-foot-8 senior, All-State kid. He’s going to be a matchup problem for us. Hopefully, we can keep Andrew [Edholm] healthy this week and out of foul trouble on Saturday because I think he’s strong enough to keep Pixler out of the post if he can stay on the floor. They run a little more high-low game with Pixler inside. They’re not a great perimeter shooting team but we need to be able to keep their guards from attacking the paint and giving it up to Pixler for dunks,” Abel said.

The Warriors and Outlaws tipoff at Rawlins High School at 5:30 p.m.