‘Pit Effect’ trips up Peñasco
Lady Panthers struggle with unusual arena in title game loss to Fort Sumner/House
The Pit can do funny things to a team.
While many prep basketball players idolize the famous arena and dream of doing great things, it’s a different story once they step out onto Bob King Court and hear the roar of the crowd.
The third-seeded Peñasco Lady Panthers tried to shrug off their first Pit experience Friday night, which just so happened to be the Class 2A championship game, but there was something off about them. Shots they normally hit came up short or rimmed out. Their normally crisp communication disappeared in a cacophony of sound.
And the physical Fort Sumner/House Vixens simply suffocated Peñasco with their defense. It all added up to a heartbreaking 49-38 win for fourth-seeded Fort Sumner/House (21-11) as it became the first co-op team to win a state championship.
Despite walking off the court with the school’s third runner-up trophy, Lady Panthers head coach Gilbert Mascareñas didn’t feel the defeat was soul crushing. If anything, the players gained a piece of local celebrity for their effort.
“I told them, ‘Don’t be sad,’ ” Mascareñas said. “We’re going to go back up [to Peñasco] and everybody is going to know your name and everybody is going to be happy for you, because we gave it our all. We were down 10 points, 11 points with about 20 seconds [left], but these girls still got on them and played defense until that buzzer went off. They knew it was impossible for them to win, but they gave it their all till the very end.” It was just that the Vixens’ all was just a tad better. Like when Abby Wilton scored six straight points in the opening quarter to help build a 12-4 Vixen lead at the end of the period.
Or when Jordyn Stowe knocked down a 25-foot 3-pointer at the end of the half for a 28-17 lead.
Or when Claudia Torres’ three-point play halted the Lady Panthers’ rally and pushed the Fort Sumner/House lead to 42-35 with 4:10 left in the game.
Of those three moments, Torres’ play cut the deepest because Peñasco (26-5) had just cut the lead to 39-35 after four straight points by Carly Gonzales. It included a three-point play off her second try at a putback with 4:46 left to make it 39-34. Her struggle to finally put the ball in the basket mirrored the Lady Panthers’ struggles to find scoring.
They missed 10 of their first 11 shots on the night, and their one make — an Alaska Lopez 3-pointer — was the only perimeter shot Peñasco had out of 16 tries. Part of that was because of Fort Sumner/House’s defense, which made sure to help out whenever Gonzales got the ball in the post while also
taking away any driving lanes and closing out on the Lady Panthers’ shooters.
In other words, everything. Yet, it started with slowing down Gonzales, who finished with 15 points on 6-of-17 shooting.
“We’ve dealt with big players all year long,” Stowe said in a crowded interview room full of Vixens players and coaches. “We’ve worked on what we call ‘shark’, which is a different area of help defense from here and there. We just knew that we would always have to have help defense.”
Of course, there was “The Pit Effect,” in which some players struggle with their shot since there is no backdrop with which to gauge their shot. It can cause shots to miss wildly and leave the shooter mumbling about their errant range.
It surely played a role in the Lady Panthers’ 25 percent effort from the field (13 for 53), as well as an 11-of-18 performance at the free throw line. Adrianna Tafoya, who had 22 points in a 53-44 win over Mescalero on Tuesday, managed just six.
Lopez dropped 19 points on Lordsburg in a 60-45 win Thursday, but her 3 was the only basket she made and the only points she recorded.
“One of my teammates was even saying it was weird to shoot on these types of goals,” Gonzales said. “I think it was the surroundings. I don’t think we were used to having our fans so far out. We like them really close.”
Even though the distance from the stands to the court was wider, it didn’t take away from the mostly partisan crowd that wore blue and gold. And they were heard loudly and clearly when the Lady Panthers made the storied trip down The Pit ramp just before tipoff.
“This was a big, big deal for us,” said Lady Panthers guard Bianca Contreras, who had nine points. “It’s something we all dreamed of, the ramp, walking on that gym floor. It was unbelievable.”
It just didn’t come with the happy ending that all teams strive for — hoisting up the blue trophy in celebration of a state championship.
But Mascareñas put the night in perspective.
“If somebody could have come and said after our loss to Escalante [in a 2A first-round game] last year, ‘Hey you’re going to be in the state championship this year,’ ” Mascareñas said, “I would have been, ‘Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. It’s going to be hard.’ And we got here.
“I told the girls everybody is going to lose their last game except for six teams, and that’s the 1A through 6A champions. Everybody else loses their last game, but they should be happy about where they got.”