Rattlers take three in a row

After two tournaments in two weeks, the Little Snake River Valley (LSRV) Rattlers are 3-3 this season.

“Maybe, we did play a tougher schedule than needed our first outing,” Head coach Jack Cobb said. “But I would rather play a team much stronger in the early part of the season to see what we need to work on than a team we can beat by 20 points and learn little.”

This weekend proved the Rattlers learned something as they won all three of their games at the Wrangler Invite in Shoshoni.

Two of the games were decided by one point.

“It feels good to win, of course, but when a game is a one point difference you can’t fool yourself into thinking it could have easily gone the other way. We were fortunate as time ran down we made the shot and then the stop,” Cobb said. “That is not to take away from our wins, because they give the team confidence and the boys played hard, but we know there is still much to work on as the season progresses.”

The first game the Rattlers played on December 16 was against the Riverside Rebels who they beat handily, 47-23.

“We played good defense against Riverside and started getting confidence and good things happened,” Cobb said. “Shoshoni was big and we kept turnovers down and put forth a bigger team and came out fortunately on top at the right time.”

The Rattlers beat the Shoshoni Wranglers 53-52.

Cobb said the team did get into a little foul trouble with that game. Two of his strong players, Hadley Myers and Landon Prestrud, fouled out.

“Honestly we played a lot of different pieces for these games,” Cobb said. “Shoshoni they played big players, so I used my bigs and agains Meeteetsee, they played smaller fast players, so I played with our smaller fast players.”

In This game against the Meeteetsee Longhorns, the Rattlers won 43-42.

Cobb said the sort of games the Rattlers played are what he enjoys.

“You can’t teach these types of wins in practice,” Cobb said. “You don’t have the same excitement and feeling that you do in a close game and the confidence afterwards when you win the close one. There is no practice that can simulate that. It was a great teaching experience this weekend.”

Cobb said although the wins felt great, he knows in order to get to regionals, much less state, it will be a challenge considering how good the 1A Southwest Conference is.

One problem many coaches would like to have, Cobb doesn’t really know who is going to start. He said the Rattlers have at least 10 players who could start any time.

“It is good to have players that are so strong as a team, but having a leader or two is always desired,” Cobb said. “Hadley (Myers) is certainly a leader, but one game he scored 14 points and two points in another game. Seth Maxson scored two points in Meeteetsee and 18 points against Shoshoni.”

Cobb said he played nine deep all weekend.

“It is anybody’s guess at this point on what player is going to shake out,” Cobb said. “I think it is going to depend on the night and the team.”

The Rattllers next game will be on January 7 at the Kemmerer Tournament.