Lady Longhorns Come Home After Season Tipoff

The Kimball girls basketball team opened its 2023-24 season with games in Bayard and Leyton, both losses, and then moved on to the home opener Tuesday, Dec. 5, against Garden County.

Next come games Friday at Perkins County, and Saturday against Morrill at home with JV starting at 3 p.m. 

Here's a look at the first two games.

Bayard 53, Kimball 6

"This was not a good game for us," coach Jaclyn Burks told the Observer. "We reverted back to our old habits in this game and it cost us. We made  some muscle memory mistakes instead of implementing the things we have worked on all summer. I told the girls that we were not that team and could not continue to do the things we have done wrong in order to be competitive this year."

Leyton 48, Kimball 25

"The girls responded in a good way for our second game with Leyton, which was a state qualifying team last year, and they lost no one from graduation," Burks said. "Last year, Leyton pressed us most of the game, but the girls handled the press more efficiently this go around.

"Our outside shooting was not well, however, and we were not able to match their scoring. We really need to focus on our unforced turnovers as they won that battle and capitalized on those turnovers.

"Some good things from this game were handling ball pressure better, shooting more and continuing to fight through the whole game."

The Lady Warriors got ahead of the Lady Longhorns early, using their aggressive pressure defense to shut down the Kimball offense. At the end of the first period, the Leyton girls held an 11-6 lead.

The half ended with Kimball junior Rachel Berger hitting a field goal to move the score to 31-10 at the half. The Leyton girls added 17 more points in the second half to take the 48-25 win.

Here are Kimball stats from the Leyton game:

Rachel Berger: 8 pts 6 reb 1 stl.

Addy Olson: 6 pts 2reb  1 stl 1 blk

Grace Anderson: 4 pts 6 reb 1 blk

Grace Moore 2: pts 4 reb 1 stl

Aubrey Culek: 2 pts 1 reb 1 blk

Mallory Hottell: 3 pts 1 reb

Julia Winstrom: 4 reb

Joey Perry 4 reb: 1 assist

Jade O'Rourke: 1 reb