Mesa Vista girls outlast rival Peñasco
Escalante boys reach finals after beating McCurdy
ESPA—OLA — The Mesa Vista girls basketball team talked about being a stronger team — both physically and mentally.
The Lady Trojans showed it Friday night against one of their most heated District 5-2A rivals.
They went toe-to-toe with the Peñasco Lady Panthers in the semifinals of the Northern Rio Grande Tournament in front of 2,000 people in Española Valley’s Edward Medina Gymnasium and showed they were the more physical team.
The guard tandem of Tana Lopez and Bella Boies combined for 50 points and led Mesa Vista to its second straight Northern Rio Grande championship appearance with a 76-70 win.
The Lady Trojans (9-2) will face another familiar foe in the Dulce Lady Hawks, who beat Pecos 55-40 in the other semifinal.
Not only is it a rematch of last year’s final, this will be the third matchup between the pair in the last 18 days.
On the boys side, Escalante lived up to its No. 1 seed as it outraced the McCurdy Bobcats 85-78.
The Lobos’ reward?
The three-time defending tournament champion Pecos Panthers, who beat Mora 66-60 to reach a 10th straight tournament championship game.
Girls
Lady Trojans head coach Jesse Boies said he can tell the difference in his team’s strength in the way the players attack the basket.
A year ago, the Lady Trojans usually found the floor when encountering contact. Now, they’re standing — and usually scoring.
“I tell them not to go to the basket looking for contact or a foul,” Boies said. “‘Go up to finish. If they foul you, that’s great. If not, you still went up strong.’ ”
Bella Boies definitely did that in the second quarter. Boies collected 12 of her 20 points in the quarter, pairing three transition layups with a couple of 3-pointers. Mesa Vista turned a 23-22 lead into a 42-32 margin on Bella’s wing 3 with 20 seconds left before half.
Then, there were the post players in Shanae Silva, Brittni Suazo and Kaelynn
Trujillo. The trio combined for 20 points, 13 rebounds, six steals and a block as they flexed their muscles against Lady Panthers senior forward Analise MacAuley, who finished with 24 points and 14 rebounds.
MacAuley combined with guards Rochelle Lopez (25 points) and Alyssa Atencio (11 points) to keep Peñasco (7-5) within shouting distance. Atencio and Lopez combined for the Lady Panthers’s first 10 points of the second half, with Lopez’s leaner on a drive with 5:11 left in the third quarter bringing her team within 47-42.
It took a 13-5 Mesa Vista run late in the quarter to create some distance, as Lopez drained a 3 with 48 seconds left to make it 62-49 Lady Trojans.
“The first half, we were kinda playing their game,” Lopez said. “The second half, I thought we played at our pace
and took care of the ball more.”
The Lady Trojans will get a chance to beat Dulce (9-6) for a third straight time in as many weeks. The teams played in the championship game of Aztec’s Rumble in the Jungle Tournament on Dec. 29, with Mesa Vista securing a 52-40 win.
Boys
Escalante head coach Isaac Royston felt this year’s edition of the Lobos could play fast. But even scoring 85 points against an equally athletic Bobcats team was impressive to watch.
The Lobos’ ability to play at that pace allowed Royston to play more man-toman defense and match up better with Bobcat guards Judah Duran and Ryan Montoya.
“We got the athletes to play a little more man,” Royston said. “The objective was to get them a little off their rhythm, but I knew we could score. It was just trying to slow them down a little bit.”
If anything, the Lobos’ ability to speed McCurdy up created scoring chances on the other end, especially to end the first half. A closing 7-0 run was spurred by four Bobcat turnovers, and when Adamacio Bustamante scored on a transition layup with 13.6 seconds left, Escalante took a 37-31 lead into the locker room.
The second half was a yo-yo affair in which the Lobos pushed the lead into double figures, only to see McCurdy rally. Escalante (7-2) had leads of 44-33, 51-41 and 66-52 in the second half, but McCurdy (4-5) responded each time.
A 10-0 run midway through the fourth brought the Bobcats within 70-67 on Duran’s reverse layup with 3:27 left. Duran and Montoya combined for 22 of McCurdy’s 35 points in the quarter.
Montoya single-handedly responded to a 5-0 Lobos run with a pair of triples to cut the deficit to 76-73, then hit a floater in the lane with 1:34 left to make it 77-75.
“We’d get off of them [defensively], and those guys can shoot,” Royston said. “We got a little lazy on that, and we missed a couple of free throws here and there, but we hung tough.”
Pecos, meanwhile, outlasted its long-time rival with strong defense and timely buckets. The Panthers built leads of 35-25 in the second quarter and 50-41 in the third, as the Rangers struggled to take care of the ball.
When Mora did take care of the ball, it patiently attacked the basket. Despite not making a 3 in the second half, the Rangers rallied to take a 55-54 lead on Jeremiah Pacheco’s free throw with 4:01 left. But the Panthers responded with six straight points to take a 60-55 lead on Bradyn Encinias’ runner in the lane with 2:12 left.
Arthur Gonzales, Pecos’ head coach, said his team showed it could play just as physically against a bigger opponent. Pecos held its own on the defensive end as Mora only outrebounded the Panthers 13-11 in the second half.
“Our No. 1 thing is to win the rebounding battle,” Gonzales said. “Regardless of size, what matters when rebounding is positioning, and getting good position gives you chances [to get the rebound]. We focused on that and the boys came up big when they needed to.”
Ortega’s 12 points.
Questa plays Dulce for seventh place at 10 a.m.