Rams top Muleshoe in opener

PORTALES — The Rams avoided a late Muleshoe rally in their girls basketball season opener Tuesday night, and came out with a 48-43 victory at the Ram Athletic Center.

Portales (1-0) led by as many as 14 at one point in the fourth quarter, only to see Muleshoe pull within three in the final two minutes. The Rams, however, managed to hold off the late surge.

“It looked like a first game for us,” Rams coach Wade Fraze said. “We saw spurts where things worked like they should, we looked pretty decent. And then, we saw spurts where it looked like a first game — we turned the ball over, missed easy shots, gave them easy baskets, things like that.

“It was a good game for us, in that it was a good, hard-fought game against a good team. (It was a) physical game and it was tight. That’s one of the better teams we’ve played, starting the season off.”

Trailing 44-30 with 6:39 to play, the Mules (1-5) appeared to be dead in the water, after a tough back and forth game to that point. However, Muleshoe would not go down quietly, as Keely Dunham and Yvonne Diaz quickly cut the deficit to nine.

After Portales’ (1-0) Zamorye Cox had a lay-in to extend the lead back to double-digits, Muleshoe’s Kyndal Miller and Dunham each had baskets to help close the gap to 46-41. After the Mules called a timeout with 1:44 to play, Ahahi Barrera layed it in with 96 seconds to play, cutting Portales’ lead to just three.

However, after the Rams had a bad pass — leading to an over and back call, Muleshoe ran out of gas. Cox stole a dribble from inside the lane, before passing it off to Sarah Lovato, who was fouled with 19.5 seconds to play. Lovato knocked down both of her free throws, effectively sinking Muleshoe’s chances of a come-from-behind victory.

“We’ve just got to do a better job of executing. Right now, we’re struggling on the offensive end,” Mules coach Jay Parker said. “Defensively, I thought we did a really good job in the first-half hitting on the boards, and then they hurt us in the second-half, hitting on the boards — which, kind of got us in a hole, and we just couldn’t dig out of it.”

The Rams, playing in their aforementioned season-opener, got off to a sluggish start in the first quarter. Portales could not hit on open 3-pointers, while Muleshoe in turn was able to make a couple of short jumpers.

The Rams soon came alive to take a commanding lead, late in the first period, as the 3-point shot started to fall down. Cox’s trey increased the Rams’ lead to eight, 13-5, before the Mules closed the gap back within five to end the first quarter.

The second and third quarters became a physical inside-the-lane battle, as the Portales frontcourt tandem of Lindsay Blakey and Taylee Rippee began to take over the ballgame. Blakey took Cox’ fastbreak pass and hit a jumper, before Rippee followed with a spinning turnaround jumper of her own, extending the Ram lead to 19-12, with just over three minutes before half.

While the Mules kept the deficit within five, 25-20, to start the second-half, Portales’ run into the early stages of the fourth quarter began. Blakey hit a turnaround layup and then cleaned up a missed shot off of a fastbreak, to give Portales a 6-0 run, early in the period.

Rippee then extended the lead to nine to end the third quarter, after back to back buckets of her own. Rippee would go on to add a putback-and-1, early in the fourth, extending the Rams’ lead to a game-high 14 points.

Rippee led all scorers with 14 points, while Blakey added 10 of her own. For Fraze, previous experience from the past couple of seasons has helped shape Blakey and Rippee, who Fraze hopes will become a dominant frontcourt in 2017-18.

“They were (tough inside),” Fraze said of the duo. “Last year, they learned to work really well together, and that helped get us going in the second-half, when we were able to get the ball inside and get some easier baskets.”

For the Mules, a lack of 3-point shooting from an inside shooting team really hurt down the stretch, especially trailing by three points with under a minute to play. For Parker, the battle inside was an even one until Rippee and Blakey took over the game, as he hopes that he can build a ballclub at Muleshoe that can someday have the same caliber of athletes that Portales currently produces.

As for Portales, an up and down season-opener was ultimately a satisfying result for Fraze, who praised his team’s resiliency through adversity. The Rams will now travel to Clovis to play in Friday and Saturday’s Clovis Shootout.

“Well, we open up there with St. Michael’s and then the next weekend at the Santa Fe Tournament, we open up with ... St. Michael’s,” Fraze said. “So, we’ll see them the first round of two-straight tournaments. That will be a good one for us, I’m glad we’ll be able to go to Clovis. It’ll be good competition and it’s right here, nearly at home.”