Can Hope make it 7 in a row?
For the record, Jim Murphy is not a fan of dynasties. “I’m a sports guy,” he said. “I’m rooting against the Golden State Warriors now. I’m rooting against the Patriots.”
For all intents and purposes, Jim Murphy coaches the Yankees. So the analogy is specific to the bubble he occupies in Albuquerque’s Northeast Heights.
“I hate to say it,” Hope Christian’s longtime varsity boys basketball coach said. “I came from New York, and my dad was a big baseball guy. But he hated the Yankees. And we’re the team everybody hates. I guess that’s a good thing, though. Says we’ve accomplished some things here.”
Accomplished some things? Sure, and Steph Curry has made one or two 3-pointers in his life.
With the 2018-19 prep basketball season starting today, the camera lens of New Mexico zooms in on Murphy’s Huskies, who may be at the center of the most talked-about
storyline of the season.
Yes, they’ve won nine state championships in the last 10 seasons. But that’s not the reason.
Come March, they will be in pursuit of a seventh consecutive blue trophy. And to reach No. 7 would be hallowed ground, because no one’s ever reached that summit before. Currently, Hope Christian and Albuquerque Academy (1989-94) share the record at six in a row.
“We definitely feel all the pressure,” Hope senior guard Johnny Nitafan said.
This buildup began, Nitafan said, on the day last March when the Huskies were busy trying to celebrate their sixth. The questions were popping up even in the postgame.
But Hope Christian had better settle in for a barrage of this type of attention during the next four months. This is a certified dynasty attempting to put a stamp on one of the greatest hardcourt runs ever witnessed.
“We have to stay hungry,” Hope Christian senior guard Isaiah Dockery said. “I feel like we’ve been numb to the fact that we’re super successful.”
Hope basketball is a brand that is instantly recognizable in New Mexico. And not always with a smile.
There is a healthy dose of jealousy, if not outright — oh, what’s the best word here? — bitterness at the continued dominance of the Huskies, who have made the state’s third-largest class their personal domain for the last decade.
And it’s only because of a now famous and controversial clock error at the end of the 2012 championship game against St. Michael’s that likely prevented Hope Christian from having 10 consecutive titles right now.
The west wall inside Hope’s Fenway Park-ish gym, which is so old fashioned that it still has a few obstructed-view seats, is running out of room to hold photos from Murphy’s (record) 16 championship teams.
And the trophy case is overflowing and in desperate need of expansion; to wit, the last three blue trophies for Hope rest on the top of a filing cabinet inside Murphy’s office. There’s nowhere else to put them, he said. The case is full.
As this season dawns, here’s the rub: this season won’t be like any of the others, since realignment has shifted Hope Christian from the third-largest class to the second-largest.
The Huskies, by pure enrollment numbers (426 this school year, according to Murphy) will be the smallest of the 30 schools competing in Class 4A, which is the state’s largest class by number of participants. With the 1.3 multiplier that applies to Hope Christian, a private school, the enrollment figure is at 553. The cutoff to be a 4A program is 550.
Some of the mid-level programs Hope Christian has been beating up on remain in the third-largest class, which this year is 3A.
Some of the others are jumping up with the Huskies — like Bernalillo, last season’s state runner-up, for example. Bernalillo and Hope are how district partners, along with Albuquerque Academy, Del Norte, plus Valley and Highland, the latter two having dropped down a class.
“I hope we have a chance to compete this year, and I hope we have a chance to do what we’ve done the last few years,” said Murphy, who is expected to reach the 800-win plateau sometime after the calendar flips to 2019. He starts the season with 786 victories, all with Hope where he started in 1985. He needs only two victories to leapfrog Marv Sanders on the all-time coaching wins list.
Keen prep basketball observers will be watching this Hope Christian segue closely throughout the winter. As always, the Huskies have front-loaded their schedule with programs above their on-paper pay grade, starting with Volcano Vista (Dec. 6), then last year’s 6A state champ Atrisco Heritage, followed by La Cueva and Clovis.
Murphy likens his scheduling philosophy to that of Denny Crum, the legendary former University of Louisville coach: go big and go heavy in the nondistrict, don’t fret about your wonloss record early, and gain steam in the second half.
Hope’s system is about as tried and true as any team in any gender in any sport. By the time they are of high school age, the Huskies usually have large groups of kids who have come up together, running schemes that they’re familiar with. And while Hope Christian’s winning is like honey for the bees, a lure for kids who want to get a ring, the equal also holds true, as the Huskies have lost countless players over the years who didn’t find the fit suitable.
“There’s no secret to success,” Murphy said. “One, you have to have talent. Two, coaches have brought a love and passion for the game. We work very hard, and our kids have bought into the amount of time it takes to put in to be successful. We’ve wanted to create a culture where people want to come and play basketball.”
Hope’s chances are more than fair to break the record, I would say, with three starters returning. (Los Lunas in particular may prove to be the most formidable challenge when the time comes.)
For years, coaches and fans at other schools have been clamoring to place the Huskies in a higher classification because of the way they have been monopolizing blue trophies. They’ve gotten their wish.
Can the Yankees remain the Yankees?