The Montezuma-Cortez Lady Panthers split games on Friday and Saturday to head into Christmas break with a 5-1 record.
On Friday, the Panthers stayed undefeated, beating Navajo Prep, 45-35.
“We executed everything we wanted to,” said head coach John McHenry. “Good assists, good press, good communication, full of energy.”
But on Saturday, the Panthers were handed their first loss of the season by the Aztec Tigers, falling 41-27.
Kiselya Plewe scored M-CHS’ first basket, but the Panthers would go nearly three quarters without another field goal.
They also struggled from the free-throw stripe, hitting just 3-of-11 free throws in the first half and connecting on just 11-of-26 in the game.
The Tigers were unbothered by the Panthers’ full-court press, occasionally using long baseball passes to score layups on the other end and jumping out to a 10-3 lead after the first quarter.
In the half-court, Aztec worked the ball around the Panthers’ 2-3 zone to connect on open three-pointers to extend its lead to 11 at half.
“I feel that Aztec did a really good job of controlling their offense,” McHenry said. “They went deep into their rotation to get a good shot. They’d have a dozen passes then sink a three. They’d get you tired, then they’d score on you. That’s a quality possession.”
The Panthers, however, turned the ball over frequently, managed to score just five first half points and went without a field goal in the second or third quarter, trailing 25-9 to start the fourth.
M-CHS was flustered by the Tigers’ 1-3-1 zone, throwing skip passes that were easily picked off. But even on open looks they just couldn’t seem to get the ball to go in.
“Shots weren’t falling,” McHenry said. “In the fourth quarter there Kelcie (Ralstin) finally got unwound. It’s not that we haven’t seen that, because we’ve seen 1-3-1 and we have an offense for it. We were just forcing too many things trying to get it inside.”
Ralstin broke the Panthers’ field-goal drought with a three-pointer, and then went on to hit three more triples in the fourth quarter.
However, it was too little too late, and Aztec held on to win 41-27.
Ralstin finished with a team-high 12 points, all coming off fourth-quarter three-pointers, while Plewe, Gabby Wolf, Cortney Cashner, and Simone Lopez each added three points.
The loss is the Panthers’ first of the season, after starting out with five straight wins, but McHenry views it as a positive.
“This game is kind of a blessing, because as we come back from the break it will be Monte Vista and Centauri, two top-ten ranked teams,” he said. “So I’m going to spin this as a blessing, kind of to humble us.”
“I think if we went in 6-0 we might have been a little cocky,” he continued. “But now that we’ve been humbled up a bit, we’ll come into the gym and work a little harder and tune each other up.”