SFHS falls apart in 4th, loses to Cleveland
HOBBS — For three quarters of play, the Santa Fe High boys’ basketball team held its own. Unfortunately for the Demons, basketball is a game of four quarters and it fell apart in the fourth as it lost to Rio Rancho Cleveland, 77-65, Friday morning at Tasker Arena.
With the game tied at 47 at the end of the third, Cleveland outscored Santa Fe 30-18 over the final eight minutes. The Storm opened the final quarter with a 22-9 run that covered just over five minutes to take control.
Santa Fe High hit nine 3-pointers in the game, three of them in the first quarter and four more at the end. They got a buzzerbeating three from Jonah Baca to close out the first quarter for an 18-13 lead.
Things slowly started to fall apart for the Demons after that, though.
They led 30-29 at halftime and in the third quarter, the Storm outscored them 18-17. Cleveland actually took a 47-45 lead with six seconds left in the third, but Santa Fe’s Victor Salcido hit a buzzer-beating jumper to tie it.
“We turned the ball over in the second half and Cleveland got to a few more loose balls than us,” Santa Fe High coach Zack Cole said. “You can’t give a team like Cleveland extra possessions, because they are really good about turning turnovers and extra possessions into baskets.”
In the fourth quarter, while Cleveland was on its run, the Demons did their best to stay close with help from 3-point shooting. Santa Fe’s first four field goals of the fourth were from 3-point range.
“It’s all about possessing the basketball when you are playing a really good team,” Cole said. “When you are not possessing it against a really good team, like the style of play Cleveland gets, they are going to go and they are going to get to the basket and they did that.”
Salcido led the Demons in scoring, finishing with 19 points.
“Victor was focused and he was tough,” Cole said. “We went with that guard lineup to spread them out a little bit because they like to [Cleveland] likes to pressure the ball.”
Free throws, or missed free throws for that matter, were a key part of the game. Santa Fe High made just 12 of its 21 attempts.
“We are typically a good free throw shooting team,” Cole said. “We are getting our guys that we want to the line, they just weren’t going in today. It was really strange. If we could have made about eight more free throws today, it would have been a closer game.”
While those nine missed free throws would have made the final score closer, Cleveland also missed nine, going 19-of-28 from the charity stripe.
No other Demon had double figures in scoring. Cruz Martinez was next with eight points. Jonah Baca, Christian Kavanaugh, Antonio Lovato all had seven each while Isaiah Andermann and Fedonta White Jr. each finished with six.
Cleveland had three players in double figure scoring. Nakqi Smith had a game-high 23 points while Taylor Turner finished with 18 and Aamer Mohammad chipped in 14.
Both teams will be back on the court at 12:45 p.m. Saturday. The fifth place game will feature a rematch as the Storm will battle Canutillo in the fifth place game at Tasker Arena while the Demons will go up against Mayfield in the seventh place game at the Hobbs Freshmen Gym.