Brighton’s girls basketball team snapped a seven-game losing streak Friday night with a 72-39 Skyline League win at Fort Lupton High School.

    Jordanne Kniss led the way for BHS with 21 points. Kacey Oberfoell added 14 for the Bulldogs.

    They begin play this week with a record of 6-10, 2-0 in the league. Brighton picked up its first win of the new year.

    “It feels good to get a win,” said BHS coach Traci Mescher. “In a game like this, we get to try some new things, focusing on running the offense correctly. We did really well in transition tonight. It was good to see.”

    Fort Lupton, which has lost three of its last five, picked up the vast majority of its points – 32 in all – from senior guard Jasmine Shaffer. FLHS starts play this week with a record of 4-11, 0-2 in the league.

    “It really was one of those nights,” FLHS coach Joseph Gutierrez said. “I thought we could match up well with them. The shots didn’t fall early. Defensively, we made some mental errors.”

    “It was a tough night,” Shaffer said. “We got down fast, but we gave 100 percent for the whole game. That’s a plus. It was one of those nights.”

    Brighton settled the issue in the first quarter. Fort Lupton scored the first point of the game, and then the Bulldogs scored 23 straight points. Ten of those came off Fort Lupton mistakes. By the end of the first half, Brighton enjoyed a 25-point lead.

    “We need to go out and have fun,” Oberfoell said. “We need to stay together as a team. It improves our confidence level. Playing the hard teams helps us for our conference. We’re going to dominate every team we see.”

    Brighton’s most recent loss was a 37-point setback at Legacy High School. Mescher said the Lightning forced her team to “play offense between the 3-point lines” for much of the first quarter.

    Yadira Angel (two points), Miranda Kruse (three points), Anessa Salinas (one point) and Amber Anderson (one point) were the other players to score for the Bluedevils. Anderson had to leave the game early in the second quarter. She collided with the bottom row of the bleachers and had to be helped from the floor.

    Gutierrez said Tuesday that his starting center was out for the reat of the year.

    “That changes the complexity of our team. Jasmine becomes the only offense we have,” Gutierrez said. “It changes a lot of things.”

    “We were ready for this game. But when Amber went down, things went down for us,” Shaffer said. “It hurt us. She’s one of our other scorers. Girls look to me a lot, but they are getting better at getting their shots down.”

    The nature of the game let the Bulldogs work on some other things that don’t normally come into play.

    “Definitely press breaking. We usually can’t do that in our other games,” Oberfoell said. “We worked on it in this one and our down-low shots – some easy stuff we should be doing in games but don’t get a chance to work on.”

    “The win is more for confidence,” Mescher said. “They are a 4A school. So it’s definitely confidence-builder for the schools in our 5A section. Every team helps you improve, no matter who you play.”

    “I asked the girls in the fourth quarter, ‘Do you still want to press?’” Gutierrez said. “I don’t have a bench. The beautiful part is they wanted to press. That was a great attitude to have. They are playing better basketball than they were in the beginning of the year. We should have been more competitive, but I’m really excited about our team.”

    “We have to keep up the determination we’ve had,” Shaffer said. “It’s a speed bump in the road for us. The girls are playing hard. They understand the offense. We understand the defense the coach is teaching us.”