Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Texico senior Ben Crist glides past Tucumcari senior Jose Flores-Duran for the layup in the first half of Friday night's District 5 3-A game at Texico Sports Arena.
TEXICO — Texico High's boys basketball team reached two big mileposts Friday night, the Wolverines hope the first two of many en route to a state title in March.
Friday, the Wolves went undefeated in district play while also posting an undefeated overall regular season, finishing the job by routing Tucumcari 65-24 at Texico High School.
Texico improved to 6-0 district, 25-0 overall by jumping out fast on the Rattlers and staying in control.
The Wolverines opened an early 5-0 lead, and though Tucumcari snuck back to make it 5-4, Texico pretty much rolled from there.
With the score 7-4, it appeared the Rattlers were going to climb within one again, but a Jose Flores-Duran shot rattled around and out. Texico transitioned quickly, getting an inside bucket from Nathan Phipps on the other end to make it 9-4.
Tucumcari was called for an offensive foul on its next possession and the Wolverines took advantage of that, too, getting a Paden McDermid layup on the other end to take a seven-point lead.
After a Rattlers' free throw, a flip-in by Texico's Cole Rohrbach increased the margin to 13-5. It was soon 15-5, 17-5 and by quarter's end, 20-5.
Texico led 38-12 at halftime and held a daunting 53-21 advantage by the third quarter's end.
Texico's Dalton Thatcher led all scorers with 21 points. McDermid added 11 and Phipps 10 for the Wolverines.
Flores-Duran and Robert Hartman were Tucumcari's top scorers with six points each. The Rattlers finished their own regular season at 9-16 overall, 0-6 district.
As for Texico, despite the emphatic ending to its perfect regular season, head coach Ty Thatcher remained matter-of-fact, knowing his players have a few more weeks' work to do before they reach their desired destination.
"We're just striving to get better every day and trying to get better every time we come out," Coach Thatcher said. "It gets a little bit difficult this time of year because we're used to playing several games a week and now we play one a week. And hopefully if you get through states you play three back-to-back, so keeping them in shape is kind of a challenge. But these kids are resilient."
Texico will host the postseason district championship game late next week.
