Lady Rebels top Bridger, fall short to Shoshoni

The Riverside Rebels faced the Shoshoni Lady Wranglers Thursday, Jan. 15. 

The Rebels played them before Christmas and knew they would be pressing full court man and shoot a lot of 3s. “We had to step up to handle the pressure, along with not having one of our seniors available to play,” commented Coach Hamilton.

“Our girls played hard but we had four starters foul out. Our freshmen continued to battle, but came up short at the end. We left it on the court that night and as a coach, that’s all you can ask of your team.”

The Rebels started off a little sluggish against the Lady Scouts, and when Brooklynn Paxton got into foul trouble, the girls really stepped up their defense, holding Bridger to 10 points in the second half. Varissa Olsen had her best performance of the season scoring 25 points (a career high) and adding 12 rebounds. Paxton came back into the game to start the fourth quarter and had a run of 14 points to allow the Rebels to pull away for the win.

“Bridger’s all everything center caused issues in the first half on both ends of the court, but the Rebel defense did a great job on her in the second half limiting her to seven. After the tough game we had on Thursday night with Shoshoni, I knew we would take a while to get going and their press and zone slowed us down,” said Coach Hamilton.

“Every night you aren’t going to be at the peak of your game, so you have to play strong defense to make up for it! This upcoming week we get back to conference play with a home game against Meeteetse and a road game at Dubois which is big for us as these games will determine seeding for the regional tournament. We hope we’ll have all three of our seniors available to play.”

Riverside 17 7 24 14 59 

Shoshoni 14 8 18 23 63

Riverside 8 1 10 18 47 

Bridger 9 12 5 5 31