Academy romps past District 6A rival Hope
For Chargers, it’s 1st state title in 29 years
Before Saturday’s much-anticipated Class 4A matchup between two of the state’s blueblood boys programs, Albuquerque Academy coach Marcos CdeBaca took his team into the school gym and had them look at the state-championship banners on the wall.
There certainly are plenty of them to see. The only thing is, there is quite gap since the last one.
“I stared at that wall (Friday) night; ’94 is the last time we put something up,” C’deBaca said. “We had a little pre-game before we came to the Pit and I had them stare at the wall. I told them we want a 2023 up there and we got it.”
The top-seeded Chargers just threw too many weapons onto the Pit floor, overwhelming No. 6 Hope Christian 70-39.
The Chargers (27-3) claimed their ninth state championship and first since the last of its six straight titles in 1994. The Huskies (21-11) share the consecutive championship streak, getting six straight from 2013-2018. And they were trying for their 17th ring, which would have put Hope even with Hobbs atop the state charts.
“It was an honor coaching against a legend like (Hope coach Jim) Murphy and I know everybody wanted him to win,” CdeBaca said. “Sorry, but we wanted to win, too.”
The District 6A rivals met three times previously, with the regular-season games close, but the district championship also was a runaway Chargers win.
“The first two times we played, we lost by three and we lost by five and they were good games,” Murphy said. “But the district championship was a similar story. They came out hitting shots and we just kind of never recovered from that.”
Academy also got a boost when injured star Kellan Gehre battled through a gruesome-looking ankle injury to score 15 points and grab seven rebounds after missing most of the semifinal against Valley. He hit consecutive 3-pointers midway through the first quarter to signal to both the Huskies and teammates that he would be a factor.
He had “48 hours of non-stop treatment,” CdeBaca said. “If you would have seen that ankle, you would have said that kid is not playing in the state championship. Tough as nails right there. Tough as nails.”
His presence was important, said Chargers forward Joe Jack, who had 27 points and eight rebounds.
“It means everything,” Jack said. “He’s our brother. We need him. I knew he was always going to be playing. I never had a doubt that he wasn’t going to be on the sideline of the state championship game. You just had to believe that he was going to be out there the whole time.”
It took a concerted effort from the Academy training staff to get Gehre ready.
“I woke up Thursday morning and I couldn’t walk,” he said. “I went to go get treatment. I tried to play in the Valley game. I was getting (electronic stimulation) hot pack, icepack. I was doing shock-wave therapy with my mom; she’s a doctor. In the Valley game, I couldn’t really run. (Friday), it was all the same thing. I was in the training room pretty much the entire day, even during practice. And I was in the training room (Saturday) morning too. I had a lot of people help me out, which is really nice.”
The Chargers also got a strong performance from post Andres Rivera, who finished with 17 points, many coming off feeds from Dillon McCleskey and Justin Mask, who each had six assists.
“We’ve got so many guys over here who can play basketball at a really high level, it kind of makes my job easy, to be honest,” Rivera said. “I go to the rack and these guys draw two and then it’s an easy dump. Credit to these guys as much as it to me. I wouldn’t be here without them.”
That unselfish play was a key factor for Academy, Murphy said.
“I think they’re very unselfish. They pass the ball well,” he said. “We were a little slow on our rotations and they moved the ball around and hit the open man and knocked them down.”