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The New Year brings new beginnings and new challenges, and for the Worland Lady Warriors girls basketball team, three of their next four games are against ranked opponents.

Tonight, in their home opener, the Lady Warriors play the 4A No.2 Cody Fillies at 5:30 p.m. Following that game, the team travels to Rawlins for the Winter Classic on Friday and Saturday, where they'll face No. 3 Mountain View, No. 5 Pinedale and Lander.

Preparing for this stretch of games, the Lady Warriors spent the holiday break working on rebounding and taking care of the ball, specifically limiting live-ball turnovers.

"We got back from Christmas and practices were really crisp and had lots of energy," said WHS girls basketball coach Mark Mortimer. "The big things that we talked about heading into the season, rebounding, we got to stay at or near the top of the conference to be successful. Then, we have to minimize the live ball turnovers. We did a really good job of that in the first tournament. We've really been working hard on that.

Mortimer continued, "The next three teams we play are a combined 17-3 right now, and are ranked. They try to push you in transition and get easy baskets. A majority of our time has been spent breaking different kinds of pressures."

Cody is the state defending champ in 4A and has started this season 4-1. They bring a lot of experience and talent to the court and can attack teams in a multitude of ways.

"After having a long break like we had you hope we go out and we look as good as we have in practice. And try to set the tone early so that we can rebound with this team and we can transition with them. But it's a Cody team that comes in with a ton of experience and lots of confidence. They've been a great program for quite a few years now. We expect it to be a battle at home, and we do a lot of great things and minimize some of the positives that they bring with them and make it a good game," said Mortimer.

For tonight's game against Cody and the Winter Classic games, one of the focuses for these games for the Lady Warriors is handling adjustments on the fly.

Each team they play this weekend uses different defenses, and well, and it'll be on Worland to make the correct adjustment to attack effectively.

"Every team brings a unique challenge. The main thing is the transition defense for all of them, it all looks different. We can't just throw in a 1-2-2 practice zone and hope that we can beat all four teams with that. Mountain View plays primarily man, Pinedale mixes it up so well, between their transition defenses. Cody plays man and zone different than the other two do.

"Each one brings a unique defense that we have to prepare for, and talk about the adjustments that we'll have to make," said Mortimer. "Offensively, each team has one or two really, really good scorers and a team that plays really well around them. You try to limit the damage by the leading scorers and play well defensively to shut some other kids down and give yourself a chance."

All team rankings are from WyoPreps.com.