RANGELY I Several players felt kind of puny last week, as a flu bug spread through the team.
Rangely dropped two games — 55-49 to Vail Christian last Friday and 56-41 to Hayden last Saturday.
Not that the Panthers will have much recovery time. They play three games this week, including Tuesday at Grand Valley, Friday at De Beque and then they host county rival and No. 2-ranked Meeker on Saturday afternoon in what will be Rangely’s final regular-season home game.
The Panthers, now 7-8 overall and 3-3 in league, will face the state-ranked Cowboys for the second time this season. The rival teams met earlier during the Cowboy Shootout, with Meeker winning 72-49.
“They’re big. They’re very solid,” Skelton said of the undefeated Cowboys. “They have the potential to win state.”
Rangely ran into another tough league team last week in Hayden, which lost by 10 to Meeker a couple of weeks ago.
In its other action last week, the Panthers fell to Vail Christian in a game that pitted two evenly matched teams.
“We still have opportunities to take care of business,” Skelton said. “Other than Meeker and Hayden, everything else is a muddied mess. There are a lot of teams within one game of each other. So it will be interesting.”