Miners meet early season goal

The Miners faced the Encampment Tigers on Thursday at the Casper Events Center and didn't have their best game as they lost 70-35. Conor McGraw scored 14 points and his brother Shane scored 10 to be the leading point makers.

On Friday, the Miners faced the Rock River Longhorns and came out on the winning side for that game 56-50. Cliff Jones, head basketball coach had praise for Basil Phillips' game.

"Basil Phillips had a very good weekend of basketball and played his best game of the season on Friday against Rock River scoring 16 points and really taking control of the game early when we were struggling to get anything going on the offensive end."

Saturday the Miners found themselves facing Saratoga. The Miners started out well against the Panthers outscoring the them 15-9 in the first quarter.

The second quarter was another story.

In the second frame the Panthers scored 19 points to the Miners' 6.

The second half also went the Panthers way with the Miners being outscored 22-30.

The final score was 58-43.

Jones said foul trouble plagued the team.

"On Saturday we played very well to start the game but got into some pretty serious foul trouble early in the second quarter," Jones said. "Devon Grosstick played well and Brendon Reeves also played well to start the game but was never able to get back into a rhythm after having to sit out for an extended period of time."

Jones would have liked to have done better in the tournament, but wasn't disappointed because the team reached a goal set at the beginning of the year.

"We had a good experience at the State Basketball Tournament overall, but we didn't play our best basketball and didn't compete as well as we would have liked to. But it was still a positive experience for our team." Jones said. "We set an early season goal that we wanted to play on Saturday at the State Tournament, we achieved that-but came up short of bringing home a trophy."

Jones also noted that he had many players contributing.

"We had some different kids step up at times over the weekend and that was nice to see," Jones said.

Although the Miners did not do as well as they have in the past at the tournament, Jones felt it was beneficial for the team to have gotten as far they did.

"As a team you have to be able to crank it up a notch when you play in the state tournament and we weren't able to do that," Jones said. "I feel this will be a good experience for us, as we will be returning 10 of the 11 players we had out for basketball this season and they all got playing time and saw the court.

A bright note for the team is that Shane McGraw was named to 1A All State.