The first few minutes of the season opener were great for the Yuma High School boys basketball team, and the final minutes of their second game were encouraging as well.
“I’ve read somewhere that the minutes in between are pretty significant also,” head coach Dave Sheffield cracked after a reporter tried to point out the highlights of the Indians’ first games.
True enough, those other minutes have resulted in the Tribe starting the 2021 shortened Season B with a 0-2 record.
First came a 55-51 loss at Brush in the season opener, last Thursday, followed by a 54-47 loss to Class 2A top-ranked Limon, last Saturday in the Indians’ home opener.
Yuma dropped only two spots in this week’s 2A Top 15, to No. 4, but were all the way down at No. 21 in the Rating Percentage Index as of Monday. (Both, along with MaxPreps and Packard ratings, help determine the 24 teams that will advance to the postseason.)
The Indians still have time to right the court, beginning this past Tuesday night in Imperial, Nebraska, against the Chase County Longhorns.
However, that did not go well either as the Indians dropped a 57-48 decision, the program’s eighth-straight loss to the Longhorns.
“Now you get in and start making fixes,” Sheffield said. “We showed glimpses…we need to realize our potential.”
The Indians currently do not have a lot of practice time to work out the kinks with five games from last Thursday through this upcoming Saturday.
“These first five games are a flurry,” Sheffield said. “It’s just pregame, after pregame, after pregame.”
Wray has one league win among the LPAA’s 2A schools, while Akron is 0-1. The rest crank up league play this week.
The Indians will have to get off to a better start to league play this weekend, then it did to the season last week.
