Robertson scores upset over Portales

PORTALES - In any sport, staying undefeated is hard. So is trying to beat a team twice in the same season.

Unfortunately for the Portales Rams, they learned both the hard way in Friday night's girls basketball game against Robertson.

After beating the Cardinals in last Friday's Santa Fe Capital City Tournament semifinals, 53-42, the Rams had an opportunity to make it twice in literally one week against Robertson. However, Maria Barela sank a 3-pointer with just over 10 seconds left in what proved to be the game-winner, in a 49-47 Cardinals victory.

"We actually drew a play up for our big to get something down on the baseline. But, their guard sagged, so (Barela) pulled a 3 and knocked it down," Cardinals coach Leroy Barela said.

"We ask her to do that a lot, and we actually drew something like that up right before halftime, for her to pull up the shot and she passed it. We went into halftime and lit her up and said, 'You shoot 3's, so shoot 3's.' She didn't do it before halftime, but she did it at the end of the game to get the win."

Portales (7-1) trailed by two to start the fourth quarter, but soon went on a 10-2 run to take a 46-40 lead, midway through the period. Robertson soon called a timeout, and then stormed out of the timeout with a 6-0 run, including an Alianza Darley bouncepass to Tessa Ortiz for the lay-in past a Rams defender.

The final few minutes proved to be a defensive struggle, as Ortiz missed a pair of free throws with 90 seconds remaining, while Zamorye Cox split her free throw attempts just moments later to put Portales back up by one.

After a Rams defensive stop, Portales tried to run as much clock as possible, forcing the Cardinals to finally foul Lillie Saiz with 33.9 seconds left. Saiz missed the 1-and-1, and then off of the defensive rebound, Robertson called another timeout with 22.6 seconds left to play.

The Cardinals (6-1) got it down low, but then kicked it out to Barela, who drained a trey with approximately 11 seconds left to pull Robertson ahead, 49-47. The Rams quickly hurried it up the court, but Taylee Rippee's mid-range jumper from the left side went too far, allowing Robertson to hang on for the key road victory.

"We were just in man. (Barela) hit a tough shot over defense. It wasn't the last possession - it was the 90 before that," Fraze said, laughing. "That was it. She hit a tough shot, but that one shot didn't beat us. It was 23 turnovers that beat us against a 2-3 zone. It's a long 2-3 zone, but still, it's a 2-3 zone, no pressure - we just handed them the ball 23 times and that's pretty much the story."

Portales went on a 6-0 run in the closing stages of the first quarter to take an 11-6 lead. However, Robertson's size inside, coupled with several aforementioned Rams turnovers, made things tough for Portales in the second quarter.

Robertson got a number of key 50/50 balls, and soon notched the score up at 15-all with under three minutes to play in the first half. Rippee had a pair of layups in the closing stages of the half, including an And-1 to keep the Rams ahead going into the break.

The third quarter, however, was a momentum-shifter for the Cardinals. A 9-4 Robertson run was capped-off by a pair of triples from Ortiz and Barela, to give Robertson a six-point lead.

Barela finished with 17 points, while Ortiz added 11. Rippee had 16 points for Portales, while Lindsay Blakey added 10 points of her own. For the Cardinals, getting the best of Portales after last week's loss was important, but getting their own gym back was an even bigger deal for them this week.

"Our girls had a great week in practice - we haven't had our own gym for about three, four weeks, because it was flooded," Coach Barela explained. "We've been practicing half-court at the rec center. We got our gym back on Monday, so we were able to have a full week of full-court practice and we were able to kind of displace some of that stuff that we did over the week in practice."

As for the Rams, 23 turnovers was just too costly in their first loss of the 2017-18 season. Portales will now have another tough test tonight, when the Rams travel to Clovis to take on the Wildcats.

Beating Clovis will be tough, especially on the road. For Portales to bounce back, it will need to create more shots, unlike Friday's game. "The thing that we didn't do offensively, is that we were just standing and watching the game," Fraze explained.

"There was no movement. No movement off the ball, no movement. When we finally started moving the ball around and getting into holes and just making the wide-open pass, things opened up and the game got easy. But we just didn't do it for about a half a quarter or so."