Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Portales' Rico Diaz goes up for the layup as New Mexico Military Institute's Jalil Adam tries to give chase in the first quarter of Friday's game at the Ram Athletic Center.
PORTALES - Heading into Friday night's District 4-4A boys basketball contest against New Mexico Military Institute, Rams coach Rickie McBroom was hoping that his team could play a "compete, 32-minute game."
And indeed, Portales did just that in a 59-36 win against an overmatched Colts squad.
"I really thought our kids played hard for 32 minutes, I really did," McBroom said. "We got to play a lot of kids a lot of minutes - we got to do some things we normally don't do. On a whole, I'll take that any day of the week."
Portales (11-8, 2-1) stormed out of the gate on an 8-0 run that featured a pair of 3s from Braden Bridges. Isaac Gomez' and-1, coupled with Tyrese Dawson's triple extended the lead to 16-4.
NMMI (2-12, 0-4) tried to answer with baskets from Hector Reyna and Enrique Salazar, but that only briefly cut the deficit down to 11 in the second quarter. Dawson nailed three-straight 3s late in the half to give Portales a 34-16 lead heading into the half.
"He seems to always be in the right spot at the right time, and the kids do a really good job of getting him the ball," McBroom explained. "He's a player and the kids find him when he's hot."
In fact, all 12 of Dawson's first half points came off of 3s. Dawson went on to make 5-of-10 from the field to finish with a game-high 14 points. Bridges, meanwhile, added 12 points of his own.
For Portales, the win gets them back over .500 in league play, and the 23-point margin of victory was especially encouraging for a team that had outscored its opponents by just 63 combined points through the first 18 games of the season.
Perhaps the Rams biggest test to date occurs next Tuesday night, when Portales heads to Albuquerque to face 5-time defending 4A state champion Hope Christian.
"Tough game. We'll go to Albuquerque and we'll watch a lot of film on Saturday," McBroom said. "We'll get our gameplan together and go play ball - see where we're at. Turnovers are gonna be key, we're gonna have to take care of the ball.
"We're gonna have to continue to get the shots that we want to get, and we're gonna have to knock them down."
