The Montezuma-Cortez girls basketball team opens a new season on Tuesday at Grand County High School in Moab, Utah.
After losing all five starters and eight total players from last year’s squad to graduation, the 2016-17 Lady Panthers will look quite different from last year’s team.
Head coach John McHenry has three seniors and a few juniors, but the bulk of his squad is made up of underclassmen. So, he’ll look to returning senior Cortney Cashner and retuning junior Payton Keith as leaders.
“Cortney Cashner is one varsity ball player coming back, so I’m expecting her to lead,” he said. “Payton Keith is another one. She had a good softball season and she’ll come in and those two will step up for us. I’ve got a couple other seniors that have put in some JV time and I’m hoping for them to step up, but we’ll be young.”
Looking to the future, McHenry said that he’s got a strong group of underclassmen that will learn and grow on the junior varsity team under coach Brittney Whiteman.
And then speaking of the current varsity campaign, he said his squad will have to take care of the ball and knock down outside shots to counter the size they’ll face in the Intermountain League.
“We won’t be able to get in there and grind with anybody,” he explained. “We’ll have to get after them about three-quarter court, because in a half-court set we just won’t have the size to go against what Centauri and Pagosa have to offer.”
“Those two teams are tougher than ever, still,” he continued. “I watched Pagosa over at the Fort Lewis and there they were banging away with 5A Albuquerque teams and holding their own. Centauri, they lost one kid and they upset Pagosa at state, so they’ll be good.”
The Lady Panthers finished 3-9 in the IML last year and 8-11 overall, falling in the first round of the district tournament. But McHenry’s goal is to be .500 this season.
“In this league, I would like to be improving, because once you get to that playoff anything can happen,” he said. “And we’re in a new style of playoff format now.”
This year, the Colorado High School Activities Association will determine all 32 Class 3A state tournament teams based on its RPI system.
M-CHS finished 21st in RPI last year, so had the system been implemented a year prior, they would have made the postseason.
The Lady Panthers would love to return to the state playoffs for the first time since the 2009-10 season.
They’ll have to win games in order to do so, but their schedule – which includes tough league opponents as well as contests against Durango, Kirtland and Bloomfield – should help strengthen their RPI ranking.
