{"id":71380,"date":"2016-12-05T19:16:08","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T02:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lady-panthers-hit-the-road\/"},"modified":"2016-12-06T02:16:08","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T02:16:08","slug":"lady-panthers-hit-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lady-panthers-hit-the-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady Panthers hit the road"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Courtney
Courtney Cashner drives downcourt against Bayfield last year. Now in her senior season, Cashner is one of the few returning Lady Panthers with varsity experience.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Montezuma-Cortez girls basketball team opens a new season on Tuesday at Grand County High School in Moab, Utah.<\/p>\n

After losing all five starters and eight total players from last year\u2019s squad to graduation, the 2016-17 Lady Panthers will look quite different from last year\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

Head coach John McHenry has three seniors and a few juniors, but the bulk of his squad is made up of underclassmen. So, he\u2019ll look to returning senior Cortney Cashner and retuning junior Payton Keith as leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cCortney Cashner is one varsity ball player coming back, so I\u2019m expecting her to lead,\u201d he said. \u201cPayton Keith is another one. She had a good softball season and she\u2019ll come in and those two will step up for us. I\u2019ve got a couple other seniors that have put in some JV time and I\u2019m hoping for them to step up, but we\u2019ll be young.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking to the future, McHenry said that he\u2019s got a strong group of underclassmen that will learn and grow on the junior varsity team under coach Brittney Whiteman.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ll face in the Intermountain League.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t be able to get in there and grind with anybody,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to get after them about three-quarter court, because in a half-court set we just won\u2019t have the size to go against what Centauri and Pagosa have to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose two teams are tougher than ever, still,\u201d he continued. \u201cI 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\u2019ll be good.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s goal is to be .500 this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this league, I would like to be improving, because once you get to that playoff anything can happen,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re in a new style of playoff format now.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, the Colorado High School Activities Association will determine all 32 Class 3A state tournament teams based on its RPI system.<\/p>\n

M-CHS finished 21st in RPI last year, so had the system been implemented a year prior, they would have made the postseason.<\/p>\n

The Lady Panthers would love to return to the state playoffs for the first time since the 2009-10 season.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll have to win games in order to do so, but their schedule \u2013 which includes tough league opponents as well as contests against Durango, Kirtland and Bloomfield \u2013 should help strengthen their RPI ranking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M-CHS basketball team opens 2016-17 season on Tuesday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-71380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71380"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=71380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}