Last season, the Kelly Walsh boys basketball team finished 3-15.

So far this season, the Trojans are 11-1.

The turnaround that KW has seen so far is laudable, and if the Trojans keep it up, it could end up being one of the best single-season turnarounds the state has ever seen.

In April 2013, I brought to your attention some of the biggest single-season turnarounds and falloffs in Wyoming football history.

This post is designed to do the same, but this time for basketball: the 10 biggest turnarounds and the 10 biggest falloffs in both boys and girls basketball history.

Certainly, a lot goes into a dramatic increase or a dramatic falloff. Big improvements come from a variety of reasons, including classification changes and infusions of talent. For example, the single biggest turnaround in Wyoming’s basketball history (by far, just look at the numbers) came from the Big Horn girls team in 1998, which had a freshman unit that eventually won a pair of state championships and had an unbeaten season in their senior year. That’s something you just can’t coach.

The top four falloffs for boys, though, all involved a coaching change — more a signal of a coach abandoning a bad situation than anything else. (My dad, Jim, was involved in the No. 2 falloff of all time as the new head coach at Mountain View in 1978 after the Buffalos had won three consecutive Class B championships. That same season, though, he coached the MV girls to third at state.) However, the top four falloffs for girls all involved the same head coach for both seasons. So go figure.

Some changes, though, are a reflection of bigger happenings in a community. For example, the Superior boys in 1962 had little control of their fall from 24-4 to 2-14. The area’s mines closed at a precipitous rate that year, with the final closure of the D.O. Clark Mine in March putting more than 70 miners out of work and bringing about the closure of the high school. As for more of Patrick’s family connections, my uncle Lee moved to Wheatland in 1972 as a junior in high school and was part of the Wheatland 1972-73 turnaround that made the top 10, but that move just happened to coincide with the beginning of the construction of the Laramie River Station power plant near Wheatland that brought a big influx of new people to Platte County.

Here are the lists of the biggest single-season turnarounds, in both directions:

The top 10 biggest improvements, boys:
Lingle, 1990, .759 improvement (from 3-17 to 20-2)
Cokeville, 1941, .717 improvement (from 2-13 to 17-3)
Rock River, 1955, .711 improvement (from 1-13 to 18-5)
Meeteetse, 1976, .700 improvement (from 1-19 to 15-5)
Hanna, 1955, .657 improvement (from 3-16 to 22-5)
Torrington, 1985, .645 improvement (from 2-17 to 18-6)
Sunrise, 1939, .613 improvement (from 3-14 to 15-4)
Rozet, 1941, .607 improvement (from 6-16 to 22-3)
Wheatland, 1973, .601 improvement (from 4-17 to 19-5)
Riverton, 2017, .595 improvement (from 10-17 to 28-1)

Top 10 biggest falloffs, boys:
Burns, 2004, .870 falloff (from 20-3 to 0-19)
Mountain View, 1978, .850 falloff (from 24-0 to 3-17)
Pinedale, 2011, .778 falloff (from 21-6 to 0-23)
Arvada-Clearmont, 1991, .763 falloff (from 21-2 to 3-17)
Medicine Bow, 1980, .750 falloff (from 15-5 to 0-17)
NSI, 2003, .737 falloff (from 14-5 to 0-18)
Saratoga, 1984, .735 falloff (from 21-4 to 2-17)
Superior, 1962, .732 falloff (from 24-4 to 2-14)
Guernsey-Sunrise, 1998, .725 falloff (from 17-5 to 1-20)
Kemmerer, 2005, .715 falloff (from 23-4 to 3-19)

The top 10 biggest improvements, girls:
Big Horn, 1998, .783 improvement (from 1-19 to 20-4)
Laramie, 2006, .631 improvement (from 1-20 to 19-9)
Newcastle, 1978, .628 improvement (from 2-9 to 17-4)
Natrona, 2020, .619 improvement (from 1-20 to 16-8)
Dubois, 1989, .587 improvement (from 4-14 to 17-4)
Green River, 1982, .572 improvement (from 3-17 to 13-5)
Meeteetse, 1996, .549 improvement (from 2-15 to 12-6)
Mountain View, 2014, .546 improvement (from 2-22 to 17-10)
Riverton, 1983, .542 improvement (from 10-14 to 23-1)
Tongue River, 2003, .527 improvement (from 4-15 to 17-6)

Top 10 biggest falloffs, girls:
Lyman, 1996, .800 falloff (from 23-0 to 4-16)
St. Stephens, 2020, .794 falloff (from 23-3 to 2-20)
Rocky Mountain, 1994, .775 falloff (from 20-4 to 1-16)
Midwest, 1983, .747 falloff (from 17-4 to 2-17)
Dubois, 1981, .746 falloff (from 18-3 to 2-16)
Mountain View, 1999, .727 falloff (from 25-0 to 6-16)
Sundance, 1986, .720 falloff (from 17-5 to 1-18)
Wright, 2020, .715 falloff (from 19-6 to 1-21)
Big Horn, 1991, .714 falloff (from 15-6 to 0-19)
Guernsey-Sunrise, 2006, .713 falloff (from 26-1 to 6-18)

**Note that these are incomplete records, since I’m missing 354 boys season records since 1960 and 286 girls records since 1976. I’m sad about that. You can help.

–patrick

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