Two weeks of rest pay off for Mora

Rangerettes beat Pecos after putting all those extra film sessions to good use

JACONA — Seeing is believing. For the past two weeks, the Mora girls basketball team set about correcting all the flaws during practice that the first 11 games of the season exposed. But for the Rangerettes coaching staff, telling their players was one thing. Showing it to them via game film was another.

“Usually, you think, ‘Oh, they’re just telling me because I keep messing up,’ ” Mora sophomore forward Danae Pino said. “But viewing it, you see that you are actually messing up and I need to change this. When you go into practice, that’s when you work on that.”

On Thursday, Mora put all that work into a productive performance in a first-round game of the Northern Rio Grande Tournament against Pecos in Pojoaque Valley’s Ben Luján Gymnasium. Thanks to Pino’s 15 points, the sixth-seeded Rangerettes beat the No. 3 Lady Panthers 50-42 to advance to a semifinal matchup against No. 2 Peñasco. That school was a 59-24 winner over Questa in the morning session.

Mora head coach Vanessa Martinez actually spent much of the two-week break after a 51-39 loss to McCurdy on Dec. 20 preparing for Peñasco, but she received a surprise when Sunday’s bracket was announced. Not that it mattered, the things she and the coaches focused on during that stretch were still paramount against the other Lady Panthers — reducing turnovers and finding an inside presence that had been lacking for most of the season.

“It changed everything, but we still kept the same intensity, the same hunger — they want to come in here and get a win under our belts,” Martinez said. “We played as if we were still playing [Peñasco] and kept the same strategy.”

The Rangerettes (4-8) still had 29 turnovers, but they offset that by forcing 18 turnovers and holding Pecos to 12-for-49 shooting. The key stretch came in late in the opening quarter, as they fashioned a 10-0 run on four turnovers and six straight misses by the Lady Panthers. Dennika Bustos started and finished the run with three-point plays on layups in the paint, and Pino had a pair of layups in between for an 18-8 Mora lead.

Pino made her presence felt in the third quarter, as she scored Mora’s first 10 points. Her spin and layup at 1:58 of the quarter gave the Rangerettes a 39-25 lead.

“We needed that,” Martinez said. “We need that inside game, because that’s what hurt us before. Before this game, we didn’t have an inside game. So, she stepped it up big time, because we told our bigs, ‘We need you to step it up.’ That way it takes the pressure off of the shooters and we can get a couple of 3s here and there.”

Pecos (6-3) looked like a team that hadn’t played in 18 days as it missed wide-open shots it had hit before and seemed to go through the motions. One thing that hadn’t changed despite the long delay was poor free-throw shooting. The Lady Panthers hit just 15 of 31 tries and were 5-for-12 in the fourth quarter as they tried to cut into the Rangerettes’ lead.

Pecos got the lead down to 47-40 when Alexis Gallegos hit the first of two free throws with 2:12 left, but she missed the second. With the score 49-42 with 37.6 secomds left, Trinity Herrera stepped to the line for a pair of free throws but missed them both.

To make matters worse, the Lady Panthers likely will be without leading scorer Cassie Muller for the rest of the tournament after she injured her right knee in the final two minutes and needed assistance off the court.

Meanwhile, Mora gets the matchup it was expecting against its District 5-2A foe, but Pino believes it is a different team compared to the one that lost to Peñasco 57-41 for third place of the Ben Luján Tournament on Dec. 16.

“We’re excited, very excited,” Pino said. “Last time, it was our rebounding and boxing out that hurt us, and our shots weren’t falling. But the rebounding and boxing out really hurt us.”

IN OTHER GAMES PEÑASCO 59, QUESTA 24

The Lady Panthers (10-3) only led 26-16 heading into the second half, but outscored the Lady Wildcats 26-8 in the third quarter to advance to the semifinals. Peñasco hit four 3-pointers in the quarter, and Carly Gonzales had eight of her 17 points in the same span.

Adriana Tafoya kept pace with her teammate with 17 points as well, and hit three 3s. Alaska Lopez added 10 points.

Larissa Passino led Questa (5-8) with 11 points. The Lady Wildcats will play Pecos in a consolation semifinal at 9 a.m. Friday.

MCCURDY 60, MESA VISTA 32

Don’t let the final score fool you. A comfortable 26-11 halftime lead for the Lady Bobcats was suddenly an uncomfortable 33-28 margin late in the third quarter in the tournament night cap. It took a 27-2 spurt that extended into the fourth quarter for McCurdy (10-3) to secure the win and advance to a semifinal matchup against Dulce at 4:30 p.m. Friday.

Alyssa Griego led the 15-5 Lady Trojans spurt to open the quarter with seven points. Mia Peña and Aubrianna Martinez each had nine points to lead Mesa Vista (2-11)

Marisa Sandoval hit a couple of buckets late in the third for McCurdy and had eight of her 12 points in the quarter. Alyssa Edmonds led the Lady Bobcats with 17 points.

DULCE 55, ESCALANTE 34

The Lady Hawks (8-4) held the Lady Lobos to just 14 second-half points to blow open what was a 25-20 Dulce lead at the half. Brannon Vigil hit three 3s to key a 16-8 scoring run for the Lady Hawks in the third quarter; then Dulce outscored Escalante 15-6 the rest of the way. Lauryn Vigil had 16 points to lead the Lady Hawks, and Brannon Vigil hit four triples for 12 points.

Tenisha Torrez and Aubrina Hinds led Escalante (4-6) with eight points each. Escalante faces Mesa Vista in the consolation bracket at noon Friday.