Two Southeast Iowa Super Conference rivals will collide Saturday afternoon when the WACO Warriors visit the Winfield-Mount Union Wolves for a basketball doubleheader you can hear in a special edition of the KCII Area Game of the Week.

The girls’ game will pit a WACO team that is 5-3 against a Winfield-Mount Union squad with a 2-8 record, while the boys’ matchup sees the 6-1 Warriors taking on the 5-3 Wolves.

The WACO girls went 4-2 against the Super Conference North before the new year, thanks in part to sophomore Drew Graber scoring a team-high 15 points per game and senior Ella Huisenga’s near-double-double average of 10 points and eight rebounds per contest.

But Warriors head coach Lisa Graber tells KCII Sports that her team is at its best when it’s taking care of the ball and taking the ball away from the opponent.

“If you can force turnovers [and] you can capitalize on them, it’s huge,” Graber says, “and we’ve had some challenges with having too many turnovers and other teams doing that.”

Despite just one win in six conference games, the WMU ladies have an emerging star in freshman forward Kynlee Buffington, who puts up almost 15 points and 12 rebounds a game.

Junior Madisen Kellogg has a scoring threat as well with over 10 points per game for the Wolves and head coach Mendy McCreight, who says her team also needs to value the ball more, and she thinks the break gave her team time to work on the fundamentals.

“To be successful moving on,” McCreight says, “we need to focus on limiting our turnovers and just doing the little things right. Once we get those accomplished, it’ll be a totally different team.”

The boys’ game is a battle for first place in the Super Conference North. WACO is a perfect 6-0 in conference play, led by junior Christian Stacy and his 18 points per game and 45-percent shooting clip in his first season with the Warriors. Head coach Chayse Roth tells KCII Sports that he thinks his defense is also creating havoc.

“In our press, that’s what we want to try to do,” Roth says. “We want to try and force other teams into making bad decisions and make them dribble the ball with a little bit of pressure and handle it however they can.”

Winfield-Mount Union is the defending conference champions and has won five of their first six in the league this season, with senior Jake Edwards piling up nearly 18 points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals a game to lead the pack.

Wolves head coach Klay Edwards says his team spent their time off working on being a better defensive team and a more consistent shooting squad.

“We’ll get in and really get back to some defensive philosophy stuff and get a lot of shots up,” Edwards says. “We’ve kind of struggled shooting from the perimeter lately, so I think we’ve got to get back to finding our touch and knocking down some shots from outside.”

While WMU won both meetings with WACO in boys’ hoops last season, the Warrior girls swept the Wolves. You can catch both games as the rivalry is renewed between WACO and Winfield-Mount Union Saturday afternoon on 106.1 FM KCII and streaming on KCIIradio.com and the KCII1 app, starting with the KCII Area Game of the Week Pregame Show at 3 o’clock.