Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
The “experts” didn’t give him much chance. Despite the overwhelming evidence of success, they probably never will. Such is the nature of parents today and their little all-stars.
When Shoshoni head boys’ basketball coach Taylor Dick heard the sickening snap of senior point guard Andrew Garcia’s leg at Wyoming Indian a couple of weeks ago, it could have been the end of the season for the Wranglers.
Garcia was a key component of Shoshoni’s offense, handling the ball, setting up plays, forcing opponents to make ill-fated passes when Shoshoni pressured, and scoring in transition and hitting key shots, especially at crunch time in the late minutes of close games.
Shoshoni didn’t play the second half against the Chiefs, and they were easily handled by Kemmerer the next day, while still in shock at the loss of their senior leader.
Then something happened. Good coaching happened. Dick didn’t have a lot of chess pieces to move around, not many coaches do at the Class 2-A level.
He brought up his sixth man, Cameron Eder, to start, with freshman guard Kasen McConaughy and big man Garrett Thrasher stepping up as role players.
The Wranglers began to peak.
I’ve been to Cowley, Deaver, and Byron many times since 1972. They were always hard places to pick up a win. Add in the Lovell Bulldogs, and teams from Northern Big Horn County will break your heart.
With Deaver, Cowley, and Bryon combined to make Rocky Mountain, it’s even tougher. Add one of Wyoming’s outstanding coaches, Pat Winland, and you have a challenge every time the bus heads west a few miles from Lovell to stop in the parking lot at Cowley.
The Wranglers won at Rocky by three points. They beat Greybull twice during the regular season and earned the third-place seed from the Northwest 2-A.
They opened with Big Piney, a team that handled them during the regular season and beat the Punchers by nine at Wolverine gym to open the tournament on Thursday.
Friday, they met top-ranked Thermopolis, the biggest team in enrollment and size in Class 2-A. They played well against the Bobcats but lost by 10. Naysayers will say Thermopolis was short-handed. So what…they’re deep, talented and defending state champions. The naysayers can pound sand.
The Thermopolis loss on Friday Night set up what are usually the best two games of a double-elimination tournament, the Saturday morning qualifier.
Beating a team three times is difficult, often impossible. Especially a team as well-coached as the Greybull Buffaloes are by head coach Logan Burningham. Burningham was one of the best high school players I’ve ever been privileged to watch when he played at Ten Sleep, and his teams reflect his energy, intelligence, and grit.
It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t stylish, but the Wranglers ground out a win. Punching their ticket to the “Big Dance.”
In the third-place game against Rocky, Shoshoni was “en fuego” behind senior Oakley Hicks, who was unconscious in scoring 33 points, including six of eight from three-point land. As if that wasn’t enough, he battled well on the boards against the much taller Grizzlies.
Dick has relied on the offense of junior Caden Kisling and Hicks down the stretch. They’ve stepped up their game. Senior Carson Kisling isn’t the offensive threat his younger brother is, but he plays with a physical style reflective of his abilities as a bruising running back and linebacker on the gridiron. While he doesn’t hit a lot of shots, he scores plenty since he is the most hammered Wrangler, getting fouled repeatedly. He’s outstanding at the line, making teams pay for trying to bounce him around.
Junior Jordan Gilbertsen is the tallest Wrangler, but doesn’t mix it up inside much. He prefers baseline drives and firing away from beyond the arc. When he’s on, he forces defenses to extend, opening up the lane.
With that mix, Dick handled the Grizzlies easily and earned the third-place seed from the West Region.
Shoshoni opens with perennial power from the East Region, the Big Horn Rams. Big Horn is always athletic, physical and sometimes brutal. Exactly what you’d expect from a football power out of Sheridan County.
The Rams beat the Wranglers, with Garcia at point, by two, 52-50 at home early in the season in Sheridan County.
While Big Horn is a familiar state tournament team, they can’t compete with the history Pine Bluffs brings to Casper. The Hornets have been a power in 2-A basketball for a long time, decades in fact. They’re back this year.
If top-seeds play out at Casper College Thursday, the Hornets will be playing the Wyoming Indian Chiefs on the Big Floor late Friday Night.
It’s early March, and the Chiefs and Lady Chiefs are headed to Casper on Wednesday after practice. Its such a tradition that Wyoming Indian schedules a two-day holiday in their schedule for Thursday and Friday during state tournament.
Why try to hold school on those days? The kids will be in the stands with mom, dad, grandma, and grandpa, their cousins, uncles, and aunties. No one travels like Wyoming Indian. That support is a tradition as well.
The Northwest 2-A took three of the four state tournament berths in both boys’ and girls’ basketball. The Chiefs and Thermopolis were expected in both the boys’ and girls’ brackets, but Shoshoni was a minor surprise, and the Lady Blue of Shoshoni were long shots.
The Wrangler girls are scrappy, opportunistic, and tiny. You could hang most of them from your rearview mirror (okay, a slight exaggeration), but many of them were in booster seats for a long time in elementary school.
Coach Ryan Gilbertsen did a phenomenal job in getting his girls to state. They played legendary Aleta Moss and her Lady Chiefs well in the opener, then drilled rival Wind River by 40+ points on Friday morning to set up a play-in with Rocky Mountain.
The Lady Grizz had a six-to-eight-inch height advantage over the Lady Blue. It didn’t matter. Gritty play by guards Brenna Metzler, Macy Jarvis, Addi Mason, and Kaylor McConaughy overcame the height advantage. Natalie Gilbertson and Memphis Dolcater played well in the defensive paint, and Eckley Winfield played as big or bigger than the Grizzlies’ best low-post players.
Shoshoni opens with top-seeded Sundance at Casper College on Thursday.
It’s been a while since the Shoshoni boys won a Class 2-A basketball game at the state tournament, 38 years to be exact. Their last win in the 2-A division came over Mountain View for the 1988 state championship. Not only weren’t any of the boys alive then, but many of their parents weren’t either.
Shoshoni made it in 1997 in Class 1-A, dropping a close game to Cokeville in the state title game. That’s also the last time both boys and girls have qualified in the same year. The Lady Blue finished third that year.
The girls have been back to Casper many times, but the boys had a 25-year drought before former head coach Jonathan Wakelin, with Taylor Dick as an assistant, took them back for two appearances in 2022 and 2023.
Here’s to a title run for the Chiefs and Lady Chiefs after the usual bad omen of playing at Casper College passes on Thursday. Let’s hope the Wrangler boys and girls can bring home a little hardware as well.
They’re peaking at the right time. If everything was preordained, there’d be no need for tournaments.
I’m a huge fan of all these kids. You should be, too.
Girls Opening Round: Swede Erickson Gym – Casper College
Wyoming Indian – Big Horn 9 am
Shoshoni – Sundance 10:30 am
Boys Opening Round: Swede Erickson Gym – Casper College
Shoshoni – Big Horn – Noon
Wyoming Indian – Wright – 6:30 pm