Girls and boys basketball top 25 since 1976… Who you got? And how will you make that argument?

If you follow sister site wyoming-basketball.com on Twitter (or if you follow wyoming-football.com on Facebook, where an occasional wyoming-basketball.com update will show up), you will by no doubt have seen that I enlisted the help of former Wyoming high school coach John Tate to come up with the top 25 boys and top 25 girls basketball players from the state since 1976.

Not everyone agreed with John’s choices, which is fine — we’re all entitled to our opinion, and I love the discussion that these kinds of lists can generate.

What we’re not allowed to do, though, is fudge our facts. And what’s become increasingly clear from the comments left on Facebook, on Twitter and on the site is that we grossly overestimate the number of four-time all-state basketball selections who have played in Wyoming.

Thanks to a collection of research posted on wyoming-basketball.com, we now have full all-state teams back to 1932 available on demand for every season.

And we have a list of two-time, three-time and four-time all-state selections. Type in “4x” into the search bar here, and you’ll see the list of four-time all-state selections is small, just 21 players — 16 girls, five boys — all-time.

The five boys? Wyoming Indian’s Myron Chavez (1983-86); Snake River’s Dale Reed (1986-89); Ten Sleep’s Logan Burningham (2010-13); Buffalo’s Trey Schroefel (2013-16); and Pine Bluffs’ Hunter Thompson (2014-17). That’s it.

The girls’ list is longer and includes:

• Amy Carver, Mountain View, 1977-80
• Deb Sylte, Newcastle, 1978-81
• Debbie Jacobson, Evanston, 1985-88
• Jamie Crawford, Greybull, 1986-89
• Sara Horton, Greybull, 1990-93
• Molly Marso, Campbell County, 1995-98
• Sunny Guild, Mountain View, 1995-98
• Mary Brown, Thermopolis, 2001-04
• Alysia Kraft, Encampment, 2002-05
• Tahnee Robinson, Lander, 2003-06
• Tayler Anderson, Lyman, 2006-09
• Robbi Ryan, Sheridan, 2013-16
• Madison Vinich, Kelly Walsh, 2015-18
• McKinley Bradshaw, Lyman, 2016-19
• Ky Buell, Rock Springs/Cheyenne East, 2017-20
• Allyson Fertig, Douglas, 2018-21

So if you want to claim that someone who wasn’t listed among John’s top 25s deserved a spot there, or deserved a higher spot, totally cool! Let’s talk about it; you might just be right. Be sure to leave a comment on those posts (girls and boys) on wyoming-basketball.com.

But if you want to claim that someone was a four-time all-state selection and they weren’t, well… now you’re a liar. Because you now have the tools to know better.

–patrick

Updated 9:49 a.m. Dec. 31 to include Chavez, who was unintentionally left off the first list.