The Kemmerer High School girls’ basketball team split a pair of 2A Southwest Quadrant games over the weekend, falling to No. 1 Wyoming Indian Friday 35-32, but rebounding Saturday to take down St. Stephens, 56-31.

“We played well in both games, and that’s what I keep telling the girls – it’s important to play well,” said KHS head coach Wade Fiscus. “It takes all of us. Great team efforts in both games – I really thought everybody contributed that was in the game.”

It will be another busy weekend for the Lady Rangers (10-4, 2-1 in 2A SW Quadrant), with a home game Friday and a road game Saturday.

“We have Cokeville on Friday here, and then we travel to Wind River on Saturday,” Fiscus said. “We’re gonna work on our zone offense this week – I get the feeling that everyone that plays us is going to play a zone. We are really quick, and we’re tough to guard, if you guard us man-to-man. Cokeville will be out to get us, especially since they’ve already lost to us twice this season.”

Wyoming Indian 35, Lady Rangers 32

The Lady Rangers gave Wyoming Indian (13-3, 3-0 in 2A SW Quadrant) – the top-ranked team in the state in Class 2A – all they could handle Friday, before a cold night at the charity stripe proved to be their undoing in a 35-32 loss.

“We were interested to see how we matched up with Wyoming Indian,” Fiscus explained. “It was interesting – they got up on us by seven at one point, but we came back and tied it, and then got ahead of them. They hit a 3-pointer at the end, and it is what it is.”

Sydney Neria and Natasha Martinez paced the Lady Rangers with nine points each, followed by eight points from Janae Skidmore, who also grabbed a team-high 10 rebounds. Ella Thatcher finished with four points, while Tyler Thatcher closed out the scoring with two points, to go along with six steals.

“After the game, I went into the locker room with the girls to talk about it,” Fiscus said. “The first question I asked them was, ‘Can you play with these girls?’ They emphatically said, ‘Yes.’ That was really good to hear from them. They were disappointed in the loss – I was, too, because it would have been sweet to beat Wyoming Indian on their home court. I don’t know if the Kemmerer girls have ever done that. But we learned some things that we need to do better offensively – we held them to 35 points, but man, we need to score more than 32.”

The Lady Rangers turned the ball over 26 times, and were a dismal 16.7% from the free-throw line – a stat Fiscus said is well below the team average.

“We committed six more turnovers than we do normally, and we were 2-for-12 from the line – we normally shoot about 60% from there,” Fiscus said. “You put that in there, and we win the game. It’s a different game if we make our free throws. The girls were disappointed, but defensively, I was