Even knowing that their opponent managed just 11 points in a road game just two days before traveling south to BHS Gymnasium for a rare Monday-night contest wasn't enough to convince Josh Kitchen that his side would dominate.
Even though dominate they did.
"You know, this was a team," Kitchen said, speaking of 2A Telluride, "that played Mancos within five points - actually beat them by five - and we only beat Mancos by 10. I was really proud of how they took Telluride and respected them, because they could have come out and really given it to us. We made sure we came out and did our jobs, took care of what we were supposed to do."
Forcing THS skipper Jose Orellana to go to a slim bench quickly 3A Bayfield amassed an 18-4 lead behind junior center/forward Jordan Lanning's first six points and six from senior guard Tiarra Christensen. The Wolverines never looked back in winning 54-11, a fine follow-up to the JV's 44-6 conquest, in which BHS led 35-0 early in the third quarter.
"For us to come out and play like this shows that we're growing," said Kitchen. "We wanted to work through our offense and defense, kind of clean up some things we struggled with in previous games. And I thought the girls stepped up."
Aggressive to the hoop all game, Lanning totaled 14 of Bayfield's 20 second-half points. She scored all of the team's eight points in the fourth quarter and finished with a game-high 22. Senior forward Savannah Kaufmann also reached double figures with her 10 points, and all six of Kitchen's reserves chipped in at least one (led by freshman Kira Riley's four and classmate Halle Loveday's three).
Content to primarily distribute the ball, including a perfect thread-the-needle dart from the right wing to the left block through two THS players, resulting in an easy second-half layup, BHS junior Tymbree Florian was the only Wolverine not to score.
"Tymbree's passing tonight was phenomenal, the best I've seen her do probably this season," Kitchen said. "We had, obviously, Jordan give us a lot of points-hustle points, since she's so great at it-and Savannah doing the same, just finding gaps in the defense and exploiting those to get mid-range jumpers or second-chances."
"And we had some freshmen step up and do some good things for us too. I think the biggest thing I see with my players is growth."
Rebounding from last Friday's 67-48 loss to 3A Blanding, Utah, Bayfield (2-4, 0-0 Intermountain) went 8-of-16 from the charity stripe while Telluride (1-5, 1-0 2A/1A San Juan Basin) was 5-of-17.
"We really just want to work on fundamentals, cleaning up the details because it's the details that are going to make us better down the road," said Kitchen, looking ahead to practices during the holiday break. "We need to make sure we're doing the small things right in practice, so that they happen in a game."
