Fernandez powers St. Michael’s past Pojoaque
Lady Horseman guard draws comparisons to LeBron James, scores 37 points in win
Aside from the championship rings, the milliondollar endorsements, the Olympic gold medals and the MVP hardware, LeBron James owns a few other advantages over St. Michael’s shooting guard Jocelyn Fernandez.
Like 13 inches in height and roughly double her body weight.
That still didn’t stop Fernandez’s coaches from comparing the two Tuesday night, one in which the 5-foot-7 guard poured in 37 points to lead the Lady Horsemen to a 59-44 win over Pojoaque Valley in the second round of the District 2-4A Tournament.
“My son, he said that she’s a lot like LeBron in that she’s so much faster and stronger than the other girls that she’s playing against,” said St. Michael’s head coach Martin Romero. “She forces your hand, you know? You either have to foul her — it forces the officials to make a call. She gets a full head of steam and then she makes that good decision to go to the rim. She’s a handful.”
Fernandez equaled Pojoaque’s entire point total through three quarters and at one point in the fourth quarter had more (30) than the Elkettes (29). It wasn’t until the final five minutes that the team total finally left her behind.
What’s more, Fernandez finished with 11 rebounds for a rare double-double against a Pojoaque (12-14) team that came into the game with the higher seed. The tournament’s fourth seed, St. Michael’s (12-13) will visit No. 2 West Las Vegas on Wednesday. It will be the third game in three different cities in three straight nights for the Lady Horsemen.
Another win would send them back to Las Vegas, N.M., on Friday for the 2-4A title game at regular season champion Robertson.
“All of us are really tired right now, especially after this game,” Fernandez said. “Especially with the back and forth, back and forth.”
Pojoaque led only briefly during segments of the second quarter, taking brief leads after Lady Horsemen center Danielle Vigil went to the bench after picking up her second foul less than a minute into the period. With her sitting out, the Elkettes used the next four minutes to do some damage inside.
But that’s where Romero’s X’s and O’s prowess came into play. Before the game he decided to neutralize Elkettes shooting guard Adrianna Quintana by having Monse Camarena-Leija shadow her the entire time. He also had the defense focus on Pojoaque guard Felyse Cordova, a player Camarena-Leija has been assigned to in the teams’ two previous meetings.
Cordova didn’t score a single point and Quintana had only four.
“We had to limit [Quintana’s] gets because she kind of fell off the radar for us early,” Romero said. “It was significant that we held her to four.”
Pojoaque center Ashten Martinez had a team-high 23 points, scoring at least four in every quarter. She, too, left the game for a short stint in the second quarter
after picking up her second foul.
The Lady Horsemen broke a 15-all tie in the second quarter on a bucket by Camarena Leija, a shot that ignited an 11-0 run that put them up for good.
It was 28-22 at halftime, but an 8-0 spurt to open the second half was followed by a second 11-0 run later in the third quarter to put the game out of reach.
As a team, St. Michael’s bucked a couple of troubling trends. The 16 turnovers were fewer than the season average of nearly 20, and the effort from the free throw line was LeBron-esque. The Lady Horsemen were 26-for-31 from the stripe, a dramatic improvement over the seasonal average of less than 50 percent.
When told about the praise heaped on her comparing her game to that of The King, Fernandez said she actually tries to model her style after him.
“Honestly, I kind of play similar to LeBron, you know, I just love taking it in,” she said. “That’s my signature move. That’s what I do best.”
GAME NOTES
Scoring: No other Pojoaque player had more than six points, as Shania Thronas came off the bench to score half a dozen.
Camarena-Leija had seven for the Lady Horsemen while Vigil, who had nine rebounds, had all three of her points in the first quarter.