On Wednesday, January 4, the Lady Buffalos hit the road to Hildale for a contest with the Water Canyon Wildcats. Unfortunately, with an eight-member roster composed solely of six freshmen and three sophomores, all of them were compelled to play as their Varsity team. Mercifully, no JV game was scheduled. That being said, the nine-member Valley entourage freely substituted throughout the ‘match’ to clear the bench in their gully-washer flash flood windfall: 86-23.
Still, Coach Dustin Cox took note. “We shot 0-for-6 at the foul-line. Shows that our defense is coming along really well. Of course, there’s holes that we’ve gotta watch that’s out there. It shows us that when we play calm, we play extremely well. If we play too tight and too nervous, we tend to make more mistakes. So, this is probably the main takeaway: It shows that when we play calm, we play fantastic. Ball movement was fantastic. They’re quick and they’re seeing each other through and they’re talking. Fantastic!”
In the win, Rachel Cox led the squad with 19 scores, followed by Janni Hoyt’s five triples for 15, then 13 from Ruth Cox, 10 apiece via Kimber Reeve and Andee Ander- son, Lydia Cox’s nine, Maddie Cox made five, rounding it out with Tess Roundy’s trey and D’Aundra House’s deuce.
With no other Varsity contests on the horizon, the weekend found the JVs commuting northward for the Sophomore Tournament in Panguitch. Freshman Maddie Cox provided the update: “I think our team did pretty good. We lost our first game [47-48!]; but then, we won the second game [60-42] and we lost our third game [28-33]. But, I think that even when we got down, we pulled through pretty well. And we work together as a team really good. And when we made a goal to change during halftime, then we did it.”
“We played Milford the first day,” she elaborated. “Then the second day, we played Water Canyon; and then, Bryce Valley. After the first day, we went into, like, the losing bracket. And then, we beat Water Canyon (on Saturday morning). So, then, we played for fifth and 6th, and we lost against Bryce Valley. So, we got sixth.”
