EPAC: Texico teams reach finals

PORTALES — Texico’s boys basketball team always has eyes on an EPAC championship. The Wolverines win it so regularly, it’s almost like a rite of January.

The Melrose boys approach it a little differently. Sure, they’d like to win EPAC, who wouldn’t? But the Buffaloes are a young team looking for anything that can help them learn and evolve as they continue down the road toward trying to defend the program’s state championship.

So, Friday night’s 56-41 semifinal win for Texico over Melrose at Greyhound Arena was kind of win-win for each. The Wolverines inched a step closer toward a fourth straight title while Melrose competed well for most of the game against a larger school, even led early, and used that game as a mid-season barometer.

“I think the biggest thing that we got from (Friday) is confidence,” Melrose head coach Kevin Lackey said. “Knowing that yeah, we’re a young team but Texico’s ranked No. 1 on Maxpreps in 2A and we were right there in the game. ... We’re still at a point where I can’t execute things like I want just because we’ve got a lot of young guys, and we’ve had injuries and things. We’ve just got to clean it up.”

Melrose led 13-7 after one quarter and the game was tied at 20 by halftime.

Well into the third quarter, Texico led only 26-24 then 28-24, before changing the game’s complexion by capitalizing on turnovers and at the foul line. Texico’s Dalton Thatcher came up with a steal and was fouled driving for a coast-to-coast layup attempt. He sank both foul shots to make it a six-point game with 2:47 left in the third quarter.

Melrose’s next possession ended with an offensive foul and on the other side of the court, Thatcher was again fouled while slashing to the basket, then hit both free throws to make it 32-24 with 2:17 left in the third.

Buckets by Luke Phipps and Thatcher gave Texico a 36-24 advantage late in the period, and it was 36-27 when that period ended.

“It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what we did (differently during that stretch),” Texico head coach Ty Thatcher said. “We struggled all night offensively to kind of come together.”

Melrose came out strong in the fourth quarter, as Tate Sorgen scored inside of a feed from Tristan Sena to pull the Buffs within seven. And though they snuck to within seven points three more times in the quarter (40-33, 43-36, 45-38), they never got any closer.

Sena and Sorgen paced Melrose with 14 points apiece. Dalton Thatcher led all scorers with 22 points, with Phipps adding 14 for the Wolverines.

Texico had survived, had played better and better the later it became. But Coach Thatcher didn’t think it was the Wolverines’ best performance of the season.

“As a coach, you constantly are trying to get ’em to execute,” Thatcher said. “As a group we just never could get our team offenses going; (there was) a lot of iso stuff that we had to resort to to kinda get going.”

Melrose had lost the night, but had perhaps won a few more crucial later-season victories.

“I’m proud of our kids,” Lackey said. “We’ll be OK. This was a good team that we played, one of the best teams we’ve played all year. And I thought we did a lot of things as far as discipline-wise, controlling the tempo, keeping them out of transition, limiting our turnovers. And I thought we rebounded really well against them. They’re a tough, strong team.”

Melrose girls 49, Logan 45 — By Friday’s end, the Lady Buffaloes were left to carry the metaphoric maroon and grey flag into the EPAC finals.

They did so by holding on to beat Logan in a wild game that saw momentum swings aplenty. It seemed for a while like Melrose was in control, then like Logan would come back and take charge, then like the former again, then like the latter again.

Ultimately, it was a combination of both. Melrose did win the game, but Logan was just a few steps behind.

From late in the first quarter until early second, a 14-10 Lady Buffaloes lead remained unchanged on the Greyhound Arena scoreboard. It finally became 15-10 not far into the second quarter, before Logan went on a 7-0 run to grab a two-point lead.

Then it was Melrose’s turn to go on a run, this one 14-0 including in order — a foul shot by Hailey Martin, a steal and layup from Nataley Mondragon, an off-the-dribble three-point bank shot from Mondragon after a Brette DeVaney steal, a Shannon May putback just before the halftime buzzer and another Martin foul shot to begin the third-quarter scoring.

When the surge was over, Melrose led 24-17.

But Logan wasn’t done, scoring 9 of the next 10 points to take a 26-25 advantage.

Martin lifted Melrose back into the lead by scoring inside. She drew a foul in the process and completed a three-point play from the line to make it 28-26. Two more Martin foul shots a bit later gave the Lady Buffs a four-point edge, and she hit a running bank shot just before the end-of-third-quarter buzzer to hand Melrose a 32-26 lead heading into the fourth.

Early in the final period, a left-to-right Mondragon pass found May wide open for a jumper that put Melrose up 34-26. And soon after, May hit a fast-break layup off another Mondragon pass to make it a 10-point game.

Logan climbed to within four (38-34) later in the period, then within 43-40 later still, but a wide-open fast-break layup by Kiki Roybal and two DeVaney foul shots gave Melrose some insurance with 38 seconds left in the fourth.

Logan’s Karli Webb topped all scorers with 20 points. Martin and Mondragon led Melrose with 15 points each.

Texico girls 55, Tatum 39 — Just after a practice last Monday at Texico Sports Arena, Lady Wolverines senior guard Baylee Sours cited Tatum as a tough team the Lady Wolves had played earlier in the season, a team she thought might pose a formidable challenge to Texico’s quest for a fourth consecutive EPAC championship.

However tough and formidable the Lady Coyotes may well be, they were not a match for Texico in Friday’s semifinal at Greyhound Arena, as the Lady Wolverines notched a 16-point victory.

It was a tight game, tied 8-8, after one quarter, but Texico outscored Tatum 41-17 over the next two periods and carried a 47-25 lead into the fourth.

Though Tatum made slight inroads in the final period, the Lady Wolverines held steady and were soon on their way toward trying to win that fourth straight EPAC title Saturday night.

Sours and teammate Ashley Hill led all scorers Friday with 19 points. Maddy Rice paced Tatum with 14 points, followed by Celeste Jimenez with 12.

Fort Sumner boys 67, Logan 59 (OT) — In a hotly contested matchup to see who would capture one of the boys championship-game slots, defending 2A state champ Fort Sumner lost a 16-point first-half lead but came through in overtime to take it.

Fort Sumner jumped to a 19-6 lead after one quarter and led 35-23 at halftime. By the third quarter’s end, the Foxes still held a sizeaable lead, 49-38.

But Logan stormed back in the fourth, outscoring Fort Sumner 18-7 to force overtime. The Foxes won that extra period 11-3, however, and notched the semifinal win.

Fort Sumner’s Jude Segura led all scorers with 30 points. Teammate Noah Maxwell added 14 for the Foxes.

Dante Sanchez topped Logan with 17 points, followed by Dyson Day with 15 and Chase Earle with 11.