RIO RANCHO — There’s practice speed, and there’s game speed.
RIO RANCHO — There’s practice speed, and there’s game speed.
For much of the first half of Thursday morning’s Class 2A semifinal between top-seeded Escalante and No. 4 Capitan, the Lady Lobos seemed a half step slow. They didn’t crash the boards as well as they should have, the defensive intensity was lax and the ball movement stagnant.
It all led to a surprising 21-17 lead for the Lady Tigers when Haileigh Brown drained a 3-pointer with 5:34 left in the third quarter. Yet, panic didn’t set in on the Escalante sideline, to the point that head coach Bryan Gonzales never even thought about calling a timeout.
“I wasn’t too worried about it,” Gonzales said.
His confidence in the Lady Lobos was rewarded over the final 13 minutes. A 15-1 run ensued that swung momentum squarely to Escalante’s side, and it never left in a 46-33 win in the Rio Rancho Events Center.
The Lady Lobos (21-7) will play in their second straight 2A championship when they face No. 7 Texico at 5 p.m. Friday in The Pit.
Escalante exploded out of its doldrums by hitting six straight shots to erase the Lady Tigers’ deficit. And they came in every fashion — drives to the basket, breakaways, jump shots even a 3-pointer sprinkled into the magical run.
When Lady Lobos wing Cipriana Garcia found Katelyn Hinds all alone under the basket for a layup with 46 seconds left in the quarter, the lead was 32-22.
Gonzales said he trusted his players to figure things out, and he also prefers to hold on to timeouts in case he needs them in the fourth quarter.
“They need to learn how to adapt and make those changes themselves and start playing through it,” Gonzales said. “It seemed like a switch went on after they made that basket.”
None of that was possible if not for the defensive intensity and the Lady Lobos’ adaptability to run several different defenses at a moment’s notice. Escalante alternated between a 1-2-2 and a 2-1-2 half-court trap and some full-court pressure, and they were all effective.
Capitan was just 5-for-25 from the field in the second half and made just three of its last 19 shots after Brown’s triple.
“They got us sped up,” Lady Tigers head coach Jason Lee said. “That zone trap is really good. They fly around in it, and we didn’t handle it very well.”
Senior post Brycelyn Martinez said adapting to Gonzales’ system in his first season at the helm wasn’t hard, especially since defense was a staple even last year.
“We were always good at switching right away,” Martinez said. “We've been practicing [more], so we’ve gotten more crisp. We’ve always known defenses.”
With the Lady Tigers’ bogged down on one end, Escalante went to work on offense, and Martinez took charge. She had six of her game-high 17 points in the final 8 minutes, and she grabbed four rebounds to go with a steal.
Perhaps her signature play came when she rebounded her own missed free throw with 4:09 left and the Lady Lobos nursing a 37-31 lead. The hustle play extended the possession and led to Paradise Velarde getting fouled and hitting one of two from the charity stripe for a 38-31 lead with 3:36 to go.
If there was one thing Escalante didn’t do well, it was hitting free throws. The Lady Lobos made just eight of 15 tries in the fourth, but the Lady Tigers could not take advantage of the misses. Capitan was just 3-for-12 in the fourth and misses eight of its last nine tries.
“Basketball is easy when the ball goes into the net,” Lee said. “You hit a couple of layups, a couple of free throws, and we’re in it.”
Unfortunately, the Lady Tigers weren’t ready for the Lady Lobos when they were at game speed.
