Sundevils pour it on against St. Pius to advance
ESPAÑOLA — James Branch saw an intensity level that was nowhere near what he saw in the first half, and the coaching instinct told him to call a timeout.
After all, the Española Valley Sundevils hadn’t scored in the first three minutes of the second half of Wednesday’s final Class 5A quarterfinal against Albuquerque St. Pius X. It was the kind of scoreless drought that can turn dreams into nightmares.
That he called it in the middle of a 2-0 St. Pius “run” that cut a 39-20 lead to 39-22 never occurred to him. In fact, that he called it even surprised him in the afterglow of a 61-41 win for the 5A’s top-seeded team in front of a mostly partisan crowd of about 8,000 in The Pit.
The Sundevils (27-1) take on No. 5 Artesia, which beat Capital 65-63, in a semifinal at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.
“Did I call a timeout?” Branch asked. “Was it a 2-0 run? And I finally called a timeout, huh? I try to save all of them for the end of the game, and it was a 2-0 run that got me going, huh?”
Then, Branch laughed, as did the rest of the people of the interview room after the game.
The Sundevils could laugh because of the intensity and effort they displayed in the first half. The Sartans (16-11) had a free throw at the 5:01 mark, but didn’t hit their first bucket until Zachary Kolkmeyer scored on a putback with 2:50 left in the opening quarter to cut the Española lead to 16-3.
St. Pius scored eight points in the second quarter, and three of them came when Martin Candelaria hit free throws after he was fouled on a 3-point try with 3.5 seconds left to cut the margin to 39-20 at the break. Española’s defense forced stretches in which the Sartans missed their first six shots, and two of their last 13 in the first half.
It was a microcosm of the Sartans’ offensive struggles during the season.
“We will go into a few scoring droughts, and normally, other teams do, too,” St. Pius head coach Damian Segura said. “Typically, Española doesn’t. We executed the defensive game plan that we were trying to come out of the game with. I think we settled in defensively. I don’t think we ever settled in offensively.”’
The Sundevils, meanwhile, settled in com-
fortably on offense late in the first quarter. They hit four straight shots, culminating in consecutive triples by Martin Gracia that pushed the lead to 16-1 at the 3:09 mark. The second quarter saw a 13-3 spurt that upped the margin to 37-15 when Gracia hit one of two at the freethrow line with 4:23 left in the second quarter.
For Gracia, who had 10 points, it was a different view for him on Bob King Court. When the Sundevils won the 5A title in 2016, Gracia was in the stands watching some of his teammates upset Capital in the championship game. This was the first time he and fellow senior Ryan Trujillo got to experience The Pit from the floor.
“It’s a lot different from watching it in the stands,” Gracia said.
“It’s just wild, surreal,” added Trujillo, who also had 10 points. “All those people here just watching you. All you got to do is just play.”
Christian Fernandez, a veteran in The Pit, was the Sundevil to kick the offense back into gear after Branch’s timeout when a driving layup for a 41-22 lead with 4:07 left and sparked a five-point run that got the lead back up to 22 points. Fernandez finished with 17 points to lead all scorers.
Still, Branch was concerned about the effort in the second half, because it seemed to ebb and flow the rest of the night. At one point in the fourth quarter, he brought in his starting lineup after the Sartans scored six straight points to cut the lead to 55-35.
Some of the reason for the inconsistency intensity is fatigue from playing at such a high level.
“We’re gonna have to get really tired [Thursday],” Branch said to the giggles of Fernandez, Gracia and Trujillo. “No, serious. We’re going to have to play really hard tomorrow.”
If the Sundevils have an advantage over past teams, it’s that they have so many weapons it makes defending them a daunting task. And because of that depth, the starters can play at a high level and rely on the bench to give just as good an effort.
“They are the most balanced, most cohesive team that we’ve seen,” Segura said. “You can’t key in on one guy.”
Which led Branch to another point of contention with his team against the Sartans. He looked at an overall 42-percent shooting performance from the field and a 39-percent clip in the second half, and remembered all the missed shots in the paint Española missed.
“That third quarter’s been our quarter all year,” Branch said. “We should have had 70 points. We’re at 61, and I’m not happy at that.”
“I saw we were at 53 points in the third quarter, I think it was, and I was surprised,” Fernandez replied.
It showed that Branch wasn’t losing his mind, even if he lost track of time — and timeouts.