Second-half surge lifts Navajo Prep to crown
Eagles made the big shots while Tohatchi couldn’t hit much at all
The Navajo Prep Eagles went out in style. Their style. A first half that longtime coach Rainy Crisp described as distinctly not fitting their personality on Friday afternoon gave way to a second half that was in their comfort zone. A style they’d ride or die with.
“Come out and play basketball the way we’ve been playing,” Crisp said.
In those two final quarters, No. 3 seed Navajo Prep made all the important shots, most of them from long distance, and the Eagles (25-9) won the Class 3A girls state championship at the Pit, 41-26 over No. 1 Tohatchi.
A massive mid-afternoon crowd of about 10,000 filled the Pit for the fifth meeting between the district rivals.
The seniors at Navajo Prep won state as freshmen in 2021, and bookended their careers with another title on Friday.
“To win it this time means so much to me,” said senior forward Aniya Johnson, who scored a team-best 11 points for Navajo Prep. She also led the team with nine rebounds and three assists.
The Eagles won the battle on the boards 41-27.
“It’s a bigger win for us (than three years ago), I would say,” senior combo guard Tru Billie said.
A choppy game was tied at 17 at halftime.
“We really played conservative,” Crisp said. “We didn’t play our style of basketball. We were playing not to lose and to not make a mistake.”
But Navajo Prep got 3-pointers from Shiloh Conn and Eva Poyer early in the third quarter for the Eagles.
Two quick baskets by the Cougars (25-7) were answered by yet another Navajo Prep 3, this one from Billie midway through the quarter for a 26-21 lead, and the frustrated Cougars were never closer than that five-point margin the rest of the game.
Five of Navajo Prep’s six 3-pointers came after halftime, and the Lady Eagles outscored the Cougars 24-9 in the final two quarters.
Billie also had a key part in a sequence that summed up the second half for both teams.
She was at the free throw line early in the fourth quarter, Navajo Prep leading 28-22. She made the first, but missed the second. The Eagles rebounded the miss, the ball eventually found its way into Billie’s hands, and she buried a 3 to complete a four-point trip and a 33-22 with 6:06 remaining. It was a lead that, given Tohatchi’s shooting difficulties, seemed insurmountable.
Friday marked the first game this season for Tohatchi that it did not make a 3-point field goal. The Cougars were 0-of-8 from the arc.
“We didn’t hit shots,” Tohatchi coach Tanisha Bitsoi said. “They did.”
Navajo Prep, she added, had the intangibles in their favor, too..
“They were hungry,” Bitsoi said. “A little hungrier than us.”
Much of that, Crisp said, was losing to Santa Fe Indian in last year’s semifinals.
“We felt the heartache last year,” she said. “That was a really tough loss for us. We made it a goal at the beginning of the season to not let that happen again.”