Lady Panthers at No. 3

The Saratoga Lady Panthers split their weekend with two conference games while on the road, keeping them in the middle of the 1A Southwest Conference at the No. 3 spot.

On Friday, the Lady Panthers were hosted by the Farson-Eden Lady Pronghorns. Then, on Saturday, Saratoga was hosted by the Cokeville Lady Panthers. Despite going 1-1 in conference games, Head Coach Heather Bartlett was pleased with how the Saratoga girls performed.

“This weekend went really well for us,” said Bartlett. “I was pleased overall with what I saw from my team.”

Lady Panthers vs. Lady Pronghorns

When the Lady Panthers had hosted Farson-Eden in January, the Lady Pronghorns made Saratoga fight hard for their 9 point win. This time, not only would the Lady Panthers secure another win over Farson-Eden, but they would do so with a nearly 20 point lead.

“Farson was a really good game for us. The girls played great in Farson, we had very even scoring with seven girls getting in the score book, and Whitney Bennett and Rhiwan Williams both had an impressive rebounding game with 15 and 11 rebounds,” Bartlett said. “We were also able to keep our turnovers down.  Farson was one of our best games this year as a team, I was really happy with our effort especially since we were able to pull off a good conference win on the road.”

Olivia Everett led Saratoga against the Lady Pronghorns as she scored 9 points and had 3 rebounds and 3 steals. Williams followed with 8 points, 11 rebounds, 2 assists and 3 steals. Bennett scored 7 points and had 15 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals.Sam Fiedor contributed to Saratoga’s win as she scored 5 points and had 5 rebounds, 2 steals and 1 assist. Maddie Tieshman followed with 5 points, 7 rebounds and 3 steals while Anna Peterson scored 6 points and had 3 rebounds and Allie Condict scored 4 points and had 5 rebounds and 1 assist.

The final score was 44-26, Saratoga.

Lady Panthers vs. Lady Panthers

A day after their win against the Lady Pronghorns, Saratoga was hosted by Cokeville. When the two teams of Lady Panthers had last met, it was on Saratoga’s homecourt with Cokeville dealing an 8 point loss to the hosting Lady Panthers. This time, the orange-and-black Lady Panthers would secure a larger lead over the purple-and-gold Lady Panthers.

“Cokeville was a harder game.  We played really well the first 3 quarters and were only down by 5 (points) at the half. In the 4th quarter we ran out of gas and couldn’t really finish the game out the way we had hoped,” said Bartlett. “However, we came out of that game feeling better about ourselves than the score represents because we did have a great first half and a pretty good 3rd quarter, we just didn’t have enough energy to finish out the 4th quarter.”

Bennett was the leader against Cokeville this time as she scored 21 points and had 7 assists and 7 steals. Everett followed with 15 points, 5 rebounds and 1 assist while Williams scored 12 points and had 6 rebounds. Tieshman also contributed to the scoring with 3 points and had 2 rebounds and 3 assists.

The final score was 75-51, Cokeville.

Following their split weekend, the Saratoga Lady Panthers are now 10-5 for the season and 4-4 in conference play. They have one final game before the end of the regular season as they host the Little Snake River Valley (LSRV) Lady Rattlers at 4 p.m. on February 18.