Lady Warriors go 1-2 to start the season

The Worland Lady Warriors returned from the Re/Max Invitational in Gillette last weekend 1-2 but showed plenty of promise.

Worland lost to St. Thomas More (South Dakota) 42-22 on Dec. 7 and Scottsbluff, Nebraska, 54-49 on Dec. 8, but beat Torrington 51-46 on Dec. 9.

There were many positives from the weekend in Gillette for Worland. For starters, they hit the glass hard and were able to execute multiple defensive looks.

"We had a ton of positives," said WHS girls basketball coach Mark Mortimer. "Rebounding is the No. 1 thing. Defensively, we were able to pretty smoothly go between man and zone."

Last season, the Lady Warriors averaged 25.6 rebounds per game. Worland averaged 34 rebounds in three games last week in Gillette.

Post players Jazz Aguayo, Manaia Peterson and Mackenize Ray led Worland's efforts on the glass.

"Mackenzie, Jazz and Manaia, between the three of them, do an outstanding job defensively. We outrebounded two of the teams thanks to the effort of those three. That was fun to see because we averaged around 25 rebounds last year. We were in the 30s, and that's huge for us.

"Experience has been huge for these kids. For almost every kid that hit the floor, they've been getting varsity time for three years and just watching their growth over these three years and watching what they accomplished on the floor. You can tell they've played together. Situationally, they're a lot more aware of things this year. That's really fun to watch when you have a mature group of kids, and they're accomplishing what your expectations are," said Mortimer.

Ray showed improvement on the offensive end, scoring over 25 points on the weekend.

"On the offensive end, she really attacked the rim and got a lot of good looks. She was almost double figures in every game. She's really come along with her overall strength and not getting pushed around inside. That was a lot of fun to watch her play this weekend," said Mortimer.

After the St. Thomas More game, the Lady Warriors offense found a better rhythm. Thanks in large part to cutting down their turnovers.

After having 27 turnovers against St. Thomas More, Worland had a combined 26 turnovers in the next two games.

"The thing that we preach a lot about is we can have a few turnovers, but it's the live-ball turnover that kills us. That was the toughest part in that St. Thomas More game, we just had too many turnovers where they got buckets in transition. In the other two games, we averaged around 15 turnovers a game and didn't have a lot of live-ball turnovers. Great decision-making offensively really kept us in the game," said Mortimer.

The Lady Warrior guards played a big part in limiting the turnovers. Elli Aguayo, Adisyn Rollins and Taylor Simmons showed great decision-making and helped Worland avoid live-ball turnovers.

"One of my favorite parts of the weekend was our ability to handle pressure. That's been one of our biggest issues over the last couple of years. St. Thomas More, we kind of showed some of those flaws, but the next two games, we only had two turnovers in a full-court type situation.

So again, the growth and maturity of these kids in these games has been outstanding. Nayelli had a really good weekend taking care of the basketball. Taylor Simmons and Adisyn Rollins all had really good weekends. If we can take care of the basketball and get those kids scoring like they did this weekend. I don't think we'll just be in games, but I think we can win a lot of games," said Mortimer.

Perimeter shooting has been another focus for Worland this season. They want to shoot 25-30% from 3 this season. Against St. Thomas More they weren't able to do so, but against Scottsbluff and Torrington, the team shot 33% and 27%.

"That 25% to 30% range is definitely doable. We had six kids hit a 3 over the weekend. We put kids in a position to hit those uncontested threes. Teams spent so much time doubling our posts that we had a lot of open looks. Madilyn Glanz came off the bench this weekend. She has such a quick release. She did a great job creating space and getting buckets in space. That was a big boost for us," Mortimer said.

The rotation was another positive for Worland in Gillette. Using different lineups for each game, Mortimer liked how his five seniors and players like Ray, Glanz and Shae Whitlock meshed. Sophomores Kathya Navarro and Madelyn Robertson worked in the rotation, too, showing what they could provide to the team.

"To get us through the tournament season, we'll probably have a different lineup for every one of those games. We'll still find out what works best before we head into our conference games. Right now, we're pretty confident with the group of eight, the five seniors, then Mackenzie, Madilyn and Shae off the bench. They did really well this last weekend.

"We have a couple of sophomores we moved up, Kathya Navarro and Madelyn Robertson. They got a little bit of time, did some good things for us and are very athletic kids," said Mortimer.

Some areas Worland wants to improve on are their full-court pressure and screening on offense. The team worked on that this week and will do so through the holiday break until their Jan. 4 game against Cody.

"Full-court pressure will be something we work on between now and Cody. Then, cleaning up our screening in our offense to create more space for kids. Those are probably two of the biggest weaknesses I saw: we couldn't press much, and our offense would get bogged down. It was noticeable in the game against St. Thomas More. We just weren't setting good screens and coming off the screens," said Mortimer. "That'll be a big thing for us to work on for the next couple of weeks."