Pojoaque holds off Lady Dons
Elkettes face Robertson in championship in Las Vegas
JACONA — Seledon Martinez has been around long enough to know when to trust his gut.
That’s why, when his team was in Las Cruces last summer for an offseason camp, he knew something special was brewing with his Pojoaque Valley girls basketball team.
The Elkettes had a roster with depth in the backcourt, a low post game with size and talent, and a locker room with the perfect ingredients for the kind of chemistry any coach would love.
“We’re in the playoffs now and we have a real chance of doing something, but I think it really hit me how good we could be when we were on that trip down south,” Martinez said. “Just a gut feeling, something that came over me to say this could be one of those things where we could be special.”
Pojoaque got one step closer to the dream of something big Wednesday night. Getting 16 points from Adrianna Quintana and 10 from Shania Thronas, the Elkettes held off West Las Vegas, 56-49, in the semifinals of the District 2-4A Tournament at Ben Lujan Gymnasium.
The win sends them into Friday night’s championship game at Las Vegas Robertson, a team that has beaten the Elkettes (21-4) twice in the last three weeks.
Both teams are headed into next week’s opening round of the Class 4A State Tournament as high seeds. Win or lose Friday, Robertson is likely to be seeded no lower than No. 3 while Pojoaque could climb into the top 5 with a win.
As of Wednesday night, no fewer than seven teams in 4A had at least 21 wins while
four others were above .500.
“I’ve said this all along, but I think there are 10 teams out there who can win the whole thing this year,” Martinez said. “The difference for the one team that does do it is getting hot with a little bit of luck and not getting hurt. All three things have to happen at the same time, but it happens to at least one team every single year.”
Could it be the Elkettes? Wednesday’s game offered suggestions to both the positive and negative side of that debate.
They raced out to an early lead and were up 21-11 midway through the second quarter as Quintana buried a pair of 3-pointers in the first quarter and Thronas had six points at the break.
Then there’s the bad, like when the West Las Vegas full-court press wreaked havoc with Pojoaque’s ball control.
Turnover after turnover helped the Lady Dons (18-10) climb back into it. They sliced an 11-point deficit to just 41-37 in the closing seconds of the third quarter, but a sloppy pass led to a runout for Thronas, whose layup with 2 seconds left opened a six-point lead.
West would cut it to four one more time early in the fourth quarter, but the good side of Martinez’s club shone through yet again as an 8-2 spurt got the margin back up to double figures.
“That’s the thing,” Martinez said. “We’ve had teams press us before and we’ve handled it, but this team, this game — we had a hard time with it.”
Skylin Morgan got the Lady Dons within 54-48 with 1:20 left when she sank a pair of free throws. An Elkettes turnover on the ensuing inbounds pass gave West’s Briana Marquez a wide-open 3-point attempt, but she was off the mark.
She grabbed her own rebound and missed an open layup, then was whistled for her fifth foul just seconds later.
Just like that, Pojoaque had survived and kept that special feeling rolling for another 48 hours.
“The playoffs don’t begin until next week, but we look at it like the playoffs — these are them right now,” Martinez said. “We have to look at every game like that.”
Morgan finished with a game-high 18 points for the Lady Dons while Cameron Sandoval and Marquez each had 10. Guard Jenna Bustos was held to six points.
Pojoaque got eight points from Dallas Archibald before she fouled out late in the fourth quarter. Camille Cordova added seven.