Horsemen rack up another win
St. Michael’s gets gritty 0-51 victory over Robertson
There were two games for Las Vegas Robertson on Friday night — the one with Mathew Gonzales, and the one without him.
For the St. Michael’s Horsemen, though, they were steadfast for 32 minutes — albeit a little shaky at times. Their depth and size trumped the Cardinals, but that didn’t take effect until Robertson lost Gonzales, its sophomore guard, to fouls in a fiery display in the third quarter. Once he and his 20 points were on the bench, the Horsemen pieced together a gritty 60-51 win in a District 2-3A boys basketball game in Perez-Shelley Gymnasium.
At 4-0 in district, St. Michael’s sets itself up for a showdown with West Las Vegas for the top spot Wednesday
in Gillie Lopez Gymnasium. But Horsemen head coach David Rodriguez
wanted to enjoy the win over the Cardinals. It reminded him of a conversation he had with his middle school coach earlier this week after his team beat Memorial, the feeder middle school for Robertson, in a similar fashion.
“He texted me, ‘We won, but it was ugly,’ ” Rodriguez said. “I said, ‘There are no ugly wins. Take it. It’s Robertson.’ ”
The sentiment echoed for the varsity. St. Michael’s (13-7 overall) turned the ball over 22 times, made just 12 of 23 shots at the free-throw line and missed some shots down the stretch, but did enough to hold off a stubborn, undermanned Cardinals team. Robertson played the last 6 minutes, 56 seconds without Gonzales and starting forward Julius Vaughn after both fouled out.
Credit the duo of Thomas Wood and Lucas Coriz for making that happen. They combined for 29 points and Coriz had 10 rebounds to go with four steals as the Horsemen big men simply put Vaughn
in harm’s way too many times. Coriz scored six points in the third quarter to help keep St. Michael’s within striking distance of the Cardinals and had 17 for the game. “We have four good posts, and we have [sophomore guard Devin Flores], who can also post up,” Coriz said. “We have a lot of size on the wings, so it’s a big help.”
But the biggest help of all was the loss of Gonzales. He scored the first nine points for Robertson as it built an early 18-12 lead. The 5-foot-6 guard got hot in the third quarter, scoring eight straight points and hit consecutive 3-pointers to give the Cardinals (14-5, 2-2) a 41-37 lead with 2:59 left in the quarter.
However, Gonzales also had three fouls in the first half, and he was on his way to nursing himself safely into the fourth quarter when the key moment of the game happened. Coriz grabbed a loose ball and started to transition in the other direction, but it seemed that he never had his balance as Gonzales came over to guard him at midcourt. Coriz fell and the whistle blew for a foul on Gonzales.
Incredulous, Gonzales argued strongly that he didn’t commit a foul and picked up a technical foul instead. That also ticketed him to the bench for the rest of the game, much to the howling of the Cardinals faithful and head coach Manuel Romero.
“Was it a foul? Probably not,” Romero said. “Was the technical warranted? Yes, I agree. I am not disagreeing with the technical, but was it a foul? I will watch film to see if it was.”
Rodriguez said the strategy for the second half was to make Gonzales and Vaughn, who also had three fouls by the half, work on defense and hopefully get them both on the bench.
“He was in foul trouble anyway, and we’re going to make him guard somebody anyway,” Rodriguez said. “Him and Vaughn were in foul trouble and we had to get into their bench, and we talked about that [at halftime].”
While it was a boon for St. Michael’s, when Flores hit only one of two to cut the Cardinals lead to 41-40 with 1:56 left, it portended the shooting woes for the team at the stripe. The Horsemen had 21 free throws in the second half, but missed 10.
They hit four of 11 during one stretch that could have put the game away.
Instead, the misses allowed Robertson to hang around despite making just three of its final 15 shots from the field after Gonzales left the game.
In fact, when Lubby Marrujo turned a Santiago Gonzales steal into a breakaway layup with 4:54 left in the game, the Cardinals were within 48-46. It took a seven-point spurt by St. Michael’s — aided by a 3-for-4 performance at the line by Wood — to finally put the outcome out of reach for the visitors. “I just finished talking to the guys this afternoon, and said, ‘Before the season is over, pretty much every single one of you guys are going to be in a pressure situation at the freethrow line,’ ” Rodriguez said. “‘Oh, yeah, yeah, coach,’ I could hear. Here we are, hours later, and there are those pressure free throws. And all of them are in a district game.”