Panther saddle Broncs with defense

The Saratoga Panthers (2-4, 2A Southeast, 4-12 overall) have two non-conference games before they play Lusk on Feb. 20 (4-1, 2A Southeast, 13-4 overall) and Southeast on Feb. 21 (1-4, 2A Southeast, 6-9 overall) to round out their regular season.

Friday, the Saratoga Panthers travel to Walden and play North Pork, then on Saturday they travel to Hanna to play Hanna-Elk Mountain-Medicine Bow (HEM).

As a team, the Panthers are coming together in a tough conference – three of the five in the 2A Southeast conference are the top teams in the state.

Saratoga head coach Joe Johnston said his team did very well Friday against Burns (1-5 2A Southeast, 4-13 overall), where they won with a last-second shot by Jace Berger.

Johnston said the team had a good defense against the Burns Broncs.

He credited Braxton Schwartzkopf with a couple of 3-pointers and a couple of steals to help the team with the win.

The 51-49 win moved the Panthers up to the No. 3 spot in the conference.

Saturday, the team traveled to Pine Bluffs and tested their skills against the No. 1 seed in the 2A Southeast conference and the state. Pine Bluffs has a five and zero record on conference play and 15 and one overall.

Going into the Pine Bluffs game, Johnston said the team had a game plan, but two minutes into the second quarter the team lost focus which led to the loss. By the fourth quarter, the team was tired, mostly because of limited depth. Darian Williams is still out with a concussion. Even with a loss of 54-71, there was a lot of improvement from the 52-86 loss earlier in the season. Despite lacking the normal depth, Johnston said Jared Crawford, the assistant coach, did a great job of rotating the players.

"We have come along way since we played Pine Bluffs last," Johnston said. He saw a lot of good things in the Pine Bluffs game.

Johnston wants to improve the baseline defense as he saw a lot of drop steps in the game. "(The Panthers) were letting people cut," Johnston said.

The team will be working on moves in practice to see how they go up against Walden and HEM, but the practice is really for the conference games, Johnston said.

"We need to get more conference wins ... but I am very proud of their hard work," Johnston said.

The next home game will be in Lusk on Feb. 20.

Game time in Walden is at 4 p.m., with junior varsity play. Noon is game time on Saturday in Hanna.

 

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