The Powell Panther boys basketball team opened their season up at the East/West Classic in Cody Dec. 8-9,, coming out with one win and two losses.

The Panthers played the Buffalo Bison in the first game of the tournament on Friday, but could not overcome the first-game jitters and Buffalo’s seemingly never ending full-court press with a 84-54 loss.

With only a couple of hours of down time, they then had to turn around and play the Douglas Bearcats for their second game of the day.

PHS made a few key defensive stops and some clutch free-throw shooting in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter to notch their first win of the season, 57-54.

The Panthers played the second ranked team in 3A in the Rawlins Outlaws on Dec. 9. The boys stayed with the Outlaws through the first quarter, but Rawlins’ offense was just too good in the second and third quarter as they pulled away for a 60-40 win over the Panthers.

After a walk-through practice on Monday, the Panthers had their first home game of the season against the Lovell Bulldogs on Tuesday.

Just like against Douglas, the game was back and forth with each team going on a scoring run, before suddenly going cold as the opposition caught fire. The game came down to the wire once again as Powell held a 55-52 lead with one minute to go.

The Panther defense came up clutch in the end and the score stayed the same for their second win of the season.

Powell High School senior Luke Washington rated the team’s performance as “a 5 or 6” out of 10 after playing four games in five days.

“One thing we could work on is slowing the game down and being more fundamentally sound, meaning fewer bad passes that lead to turnovers,” said Washington.

While the ultimate goal is to get to the state tournament in Casper, the team will continue to take one game at a time and improve over the next couple of months before making a push in the postseason.

The Panther boys junior varsity team also played in Cody at the East/West Classic with games against the Douglas and Rawlins junior varsity teams.

Both games were very close, but they were defeated by Douglas 54-44 and Rawlins 65-56.

They also played their first home game against Lovell on Tuesday, but lost again to a buzzer-beating three-pointer in a 41-39 loss.

Sophomore Jesse Brown reflected on the last three games, saying that the team needs to “stop playing too fast” and keep the turnovers to a minimum.

The next games won’t be until next year in January when they travel to Worland to play in the Big Horn Classic, Jan. 5-6.