Cardinals soar past Tigers
The Taos Tigers were tested by the speed and shot-making ability of the defending Class 3A champs, the Robertson Cardinals, on Wednesday (Dec. 14); the Cardinals ultimately held on for a wireto-wire win.
The first few minutes of the game showed Taos struggling to make simple passes along the perimeter. Starting point guard Mateo Chavez threw errant passes into contested areas. The Cardinals rose to the occasion and sank three straight buckets, after which the Tigers quickly settled down and closed the gap. Daemon Ely attacked the rim and Yovani Varela sank a corner 3-pointer.
Robertson did not relent with their offensive actions. It was a long day for any Taos Tiger trying to defend out on the perimeter. Robertson’s guards ran circles around off-ball screens and moved aggressively without the ball in order to get separation. Taos was a step slow on their closeouts and Robertson was not afraid to pull the trigger.
Given any amount of space,
sophomore Jesse Gonzalez pulled up and threw the ball at the net. He wound up with 20 points on the night and knocked down four out of his six 3-point attempts.
Without the help of another dynamic front court teammate, in last year’s 6-foot-5 Elden Torres, Ely has elevated his production to another level. He’s gone from 14.7 points to 29 points a game, and from 8.4 rebounds to 12.8 rebounds a game. Ely was three blocks shy of a triple double. Against Robertson, he registered 33 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists and 7 blocks. His assists came out on the break, finding players in traffic.
Robertson head coach, James Branch, talked about having to matchup against Ely.
“We had to pick our poison. We got to try and contain the big guy. I mean, we did the best we could. You know, they’re gonna hit some shots. And we just gotta hope we get our opportunities like we did in transition, and we did score off our press numerous times. But yeah, we had to pick our poison. We couldn’t go man, we didn’t match up at all. So we picked our poison. Ely got away from us a little bit.”
Robertson’s post player, Bodie Schlinger, presented a case of girth versus length for Ely. In one-on-one post up encounters between the two, Ely won the battles. Schlinger’s stout build kept him active on the boards as he scored 17 points, mostly after grabbing offensive rebounds for putbacks.
The Cardinals held a six point advantage, 37-31, to start the third quarter. They were able to both run off a lot of time from the clock and eventually get an open shot through the use of heavy screening and repositioning on offense.
It took a while for Isaiah Apodaca to find the scorer’s groove, as he was more of a facilitator in the first half, but once he found his range from beyond the arc, the Tigers got to within a point of the Cardinals, 64-65.
With under two minutes to go in the fourth quarter, Apodaca suffered an ankle injury and was helped off the court. Taos had an opportunity to take the lead when Ely was fouled while in the bonus. Ely sank one out of two free throws to tie the game.
Branch later admitted to intentionally taking a timeout to ice Ely at the free throw line, as you would a kicker.
In the final minute, the game turned into a chess match between Tiger coach Hernando “Nando” Chavez and Branch — each taking multiple timeouts to change strategies.
Robertson had the ball with 4 seconds and change left on the clock.
Branch won the strategic battle by calling a play called “Special” once he saw Nando change his defensive coverage. Schlinger had a free cut to the basket and Xavier Duke reached in for a foul that gave the Cardinals the goahead free throws to win the game.
Branch opened up about the game-winning play call.
“We run that play. It was open all night. We hadn’t hit it. He hadn’t looked at it. Cause I seen it all night. He’d been open. So that’s what we ran. It’s called Special.”
Branch continued “we run it with a big guy [Schlinger]. He rolls. And they went man, which is nice, because they came out in zone and I called time out. It was nice that they’ve changed it to man cause I came up to run a zone outside shot. But then I saw that they went to man, so we went with that. The pick and hard flash to the ball. [A flash cut is an off-the-ball movement made from the weak side towards the ball and generally around the highpost. In this case, it was more of a dive cut]
In an interview with the Taos News coach, Nando opened up about having to play catch-up against the Cardinals in the second half.
“This is a championship-caliber team. So, late in the game, these are guards who know what it is to close out a game. I thought, despite all of that, I thought our guards really turned up our defensive intensity in the fourth quarter. We were able to force a lot of turnovers. As a result of that, we got a few transition buckets. Isaiah Apodaca was able to hit two or three threes [Apodaca made three threes] there in the fourth quarter.”
Nando continued, “I think the frustrating part is, we were asking for that type of defensive intensity since the get-go. It didn’t take us until the fourth quarter. We finally figured that out. And once we did that, well, we were in a much better position to possibly win.”
The Taos Tigers would bounce back on Friday (Dec. 16) against the Bernalillo Spartans, winning 69-57. Their next game takes the Tigers into Gallup for a road game against the Bengals on Wednesday (Dec. 28).