Lions win with a layup against Peñasco: 67-65
Thursday’s (Dec. 22) match between Peñasco and Santa Rosa was full of theatrics, and not just from Santa Rosa’s mascot lion dancing along the baseline. The game was a tight match that came down to a final shot, with the Lions claiming victory, 67-65.
Take, for instance, the buzzerbeater in the first half by Peñasco Panther Jeremiah Martinez. Martinez, who rocked different colored shoes, one red and the other green, lost his balance and stumbled after performing a pirouette to get separation from Santa Rosa. But knowing the seconds were winding down, he hoisted up an acrobatic shot that was falling down on its rainbow trajectory as he was falling down as well. As he gathered himself, the referee behind him declared the 3-pointer to be good, released well-before the buzzer and definitely behind the line.
That is how the Panthers walked into the locker room with a 3-point lead, 28-25, over the Santa Rosa Lions.
Martinez had a few more SportsCenter worthy highlights. In the first quarter, while running out of space after running past a Lion defender he had to tiptoe along the out of bounds line and to keep the ball in the play, Martinez hit a Panther with an on-the-fly behindthe-back pass.
Another highlight from Martinez was when he slung a bullet pass from behind the Panther’s logo through the whole Santa Rosa defense to teammate Donivan
Aguilar near the hoop for an easy assist.
In that first half, the Panthers were adept at crashing the glass and getting offensive rebounds.
Down 29-36, the Lions took over the third quarter with their 3-point shooting between Jykub Gage and Jeremiah Huerta. On the other hand, Peñasco couldn’t knock down their 3-pointers. When Santa Rosa got ahead on the scoreboard, they turned to 200-pound power forward Josh Cordova to score down low. Marcos Chavez, who had a quiet first half, started to have an impact on the game with his quick bursts of speed on his dribble penetration.
The Panthers were down 13 for most of the fourth quarter as they exchanged baskets with the Lions. Throughout the whole comeback process, Peñasco always pushed the pace and they defended the length of the court.
With 7 seconds to go, the Panthers came back from 58-65, around the 2-minute mark, to tie it up, 65-65, when Demarcus Lopez hit a big-time 3-pointer in the clutch after Elias Archibeque stole the ball from Santa Rosa and threw it up ahead to Martinez, who found Lopez open on the wing.
The Panthers played hard to get to that point. Santa Rosa, and Chavez in particular, took advantage of the Panthers’ full court press. After the inbound from the baseline, Chavez broke free from two defenders and, with a wideopen lane in front of him, he only had to contend with Archibeque, who was waiting with his feet set
ton and the effectiveness of putting ball pressure on them.
“Clayton poses a lot of matchup problems. Kids are big. I thought we did that [ball pressure] in the first half. And then, in the second half, you know, once they started shooting from Curry range from deep...I think that kid pulled that up from right here,” Montoya said, pointing to a spot a couple feet from in back of the 3-point line.
Montoya went on to discuss the cost of ball pressure opening up easier shots inside the paint and said she felt the Lady Panthers themselves could work to improve their shot-making skills near the basket. Still, she added, sometimes the ball just wasn’t going in despite strong fundamentals she says her team works on in practice.
“Our point guard [Rochelle Lopez] got to the rim, probably four or five, six times, she had a good spin move there, in the first half. It just wasn’t falling. Sometimes you’re not gonna have those nights,” Montoya said. “But you got to hang your head on the defensive side. And I thought we did a good job, for the most part, of closing out on them. They got some kids that could just flat out shoot the ball.”
Montoya, who is also the athletic director for Peñasco, has purposefully chosen the hardest road by scheduling tough opponents to start the season.
“You want to play those teams early ... I want us to have the hardest non-district schedule,” she said. “Doesn’t matter about December. Everybody’s peaking now in December. Well, that’s great. Who’s peaking in February and March? We want to be that team.”