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BUFFALO - The fourth quarter demons came back to haunt the Worland Lady Warriors Friday night in a 3A girls basketball matchup with the No. 3-ranked Buffalo Lady Bison that ended in a 39-35 loss, at Buffalo High School.

"Defensively, we were really, really good. We nearly executed our defensive game plan to perfection. We defended against one of the better point guards in 3A, in Kaydin Davis, I thought we did a good job of closing out on her and not giving her any good looks. Offensively, for three quarters I thought we did really well, obviously, we had a lapse in the fourth quarter only scoring two and that's what led to our downfall," said WHS girls basketball coach Ben Hofmann.

With a 35-30 lead midway through the fourth quarter, the Lady Warriors (3-7 overall, 0-3 in 3A East-West division) looked to be on their way to upsetting the Lady Bison (12-3, 3-0) and getting right back into the mix of the conference race.

However, turnovers and cold shooting sunk their chances, leading to a third straight loss. Making this losing streak even more frustrating is the fact that the three losses have come by a combined 11 points.

"We turned the ball over too much in the fourth quarter and you have to give Buffalo credit for that. We just turned it over too much and didn't get enough shots on goal. We had a couple of opportunities to take the lead or tie and we missed some shots. It's a matter of knocking those down.

"Our seniors are giving us some really good leadership. We're close, we've been playing one or two quarters of good basketball and tonight [Friday] we played three good quarters of basketball. We just couldn't' close it out and couldn't score in the fourth quarter. That's an area we have to continue to improve in and we'll have another shot to do so against Powell," said Hofmann.

Senior forward Saige Jones led the Lady Warriors with 12 points and sophomore guard BreAnna Parra added nine.

Today the Lady Warriors host the No. 4-ranked Lady Panthers at 3:30 p.m. The two teams have met before during the Big Horn Basin Shootout at Rocky Mountain High School on Jan. 6. During that contest, the Lady Warriors had a bad outing defensively that led to a 56-36 loss.

"We lost to them by 20 and I don't think we're 20 points worse than they are. We didn't play particularly well, probably our worst game of the year. It will be really interesting from a measurement standpoint to see how much we've improved. It's a bit of a similar situation coming off a tough game the night before and it will give us a true gauge of how much we've improved," said Hofmann.