Mesa Vista leads both NRG Tournament brackets
The Northern Rio Grande Tournament’s boys and girls basketball brackets were announced Sunday, and Mesa Vista finds itself atop both of them.
The boys, with a 7-1 record, were seeded No. 1 in the eight-team bracket, and will play eighth-seeded Questa at 7 p.m. in the first round set for Thursday at Española Valley’s Edward Medina Gymnasium. Teams are seeded based on their overall record as of Sunday.
On the girls side, the 7-0 Lady Trojans earned the same seed in the other bracket. They will play Mora in the 5:30 p.m. game.
The tournament returns after a oneyear hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic and has a new home for its comeback. After spending 23 years at Pojoaque Valley, the committee opted to move to Española, which was the tournament’s home from 1989-98.
Pecos, which is the 2020 champion on the boys side, is the sixth seed with a 4-5 record after finishing in eighth place last week at the Stu Clark Tournament in Las Vegas, N.M. The Panthers will play Escalante in a rematch of a Dec. 18 game, which the Lobos won in convincing fashion, 76-47.
Peñasco, the reigning girls champion, is the No. 2 seed and will play No. 7 Dulce.
Speaking of Pecos, it heads into the NRG tournament on a historic run — just not the kind it wanted. The Panthers are in the throes of a four-game losing streak, which is their longest since finishing the 2013-14 season with an eight-game losing streak.
The Panthers, though, struggled with a COVID-19 outbreak that affected three starters. It led to the postponement of a Dec. 14 matchup against and undefeated Estancia squad, and a lopsided loss to Escalante as the team recovered from the outbreak.
The last time Pecos finished a season with a losing mark (6-21). Since then, it has compiled a 167-37 record with four straight state titles from 2016-20.
The New Mexico Highlands men’s basketball team picked up its first conference win of the season just before the new year with a home win over Westminster.
The Cowboys trailed by 16 at halftime but got the eventual game-winning bucket with eight seconds left when Pecos graduate Mario Archuleta found himself wide open in the far corner for a go-ahead 3-pointer in a 68-64 victory at the John A. Wilson Complex.
NMHU was the last team in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference to get a league win. Now 6-7 overall and 1-6 in the 15-team league, the Cowboys are in a tie for the bottom spot with Colorado Christian.
Highlands will play five of its next six games at home, where it’s 4-2 this season.
UNM has lost one of its assistant football coaches to the Pac-12. Drew Mehringer, who served as the quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator on Danny Gonzales’s staff, has taken over as tight ends coach at Oregon, joining new head coach Dan Lanning in Eugene, Ore.
The 35-year-old Lanning will take over the Ducks just as soon as he’s done serving as Georgia’s defensive coordinator.
Saturday will feature a couple of
ceremonies to honor a pair of basketball figures who have died. Santa Fe High will retire the jersey of Fedonta “JB” White at its home game against Clovis. White, a 6-foot-8 forward who was the school’s most decorated athlete since Toby Roybal, was going to play basketball at the University of New Mexico before he was shot and killed Aug. 1, 2020.
White’s number will be the first to be retired by the school, and it will be done in the gym that holds Roybal’s name. Roybal was a 1950 Santa Fe High graduate who had a decorated career at UNM before succumbing to pancreatic cancer in 1962.
Meanwhile, former official David Soveranez will be inducted into the Northern Rio Grande Hall of Fame during the boys championship game. Soveranez, who was a football and basketball official for 45 years, died Dec. 21 after spending 10 days in a coma due to internal bleeding. Soveranez’s family will be in attendance, and a proclamation from the office of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham honoring him will be read at the ceremony.
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More snow is on its way, in about four weeks.
How do we know? Because Jan. 31 happens to be the start date for high school baseball and softball, a day that marks the start of preseason tryouts and practices. If anything signifies the return of wet and cold weather on a regular basis, it’s the start of prep spring sports.
In other words, shake off the cold snap from New Year’s weekend and brace for impact. The snow will really start falling just four weeks from now.
And in case you’re wondering, prep golf, tennis and track starts the following Monday, Feb. 7.