The Montezuma-Cortez Panthers season ended on Saturday.
They just didn’t know it was over until Tuesday.
M-CHS plays in the Southwestern league, which is comprised of both 4A and 5A schools.
Therefore, the three 4A schools from the league (M-CHS, Durango, Montrose) merge with the 4A Western Slope league for the postseason.
The top five schools from the Western Slope league and the top two 4A finishers in the Southwestern league secure the first seven playoff spots – leaving one remaining.
In this instance, Rifle, Palisade, Glenwood Springs, Battle Mountain and Steamboat Springs were locked in for the postseason from the Western Slope League, and Durango joined as the top 4A finisher in the Southwestern league.
The second representative from the Southwestern league came down to M-CHS and Montrose, and the two finished the season with identical records. Therefore, the spot would be determined by the head-to-head point differential between the teams.
Montrose won the first meeting between the two, 61-47, and although M-CHS won the second contest in the regular season finale, they won by just nine points, 61-52, giving Montrose the point differential edge and the league’s second guaranteed playoff spot.
M-CHS players and coaches realized this Saturday after the game, but there was still one playoff spot remaining, so hope lingered.
The last position would go to the team with the highest MaxPreps rating, and it appeared that it would be either M-CHS or Delta.
Wins by Western Slope basement dweller Summit High (1-19) would’ve benefited the Panthers, but Summit dropped its final two games, first to Delta (55-47) and then to Eagle Valley (53-51).
After Summit and Eagle Valley finished the league’s regular season on Monday, Delta finished with a final MaxPreps rating of 51.
M-CHS was ranked at 55, giving Delta the edge and the final playoff position.
It was a bitter ending for the Panthers, who head coach Mike Hall believed were peaking and had a chance to make some noise in the postseason against what he considered to be a weaker league.
“What’s bad about it is that we were coming on,” Hall said on Wednesday. “We were picking up momentum and we’d improved a lot more than a majority of schools have.”
“The growth that my assistant coaches and I saw was just exponential,” he continued. “You can’t explain from the start of the year to the end of the year how they finished.”
The Panthers’ 4-16 record was nothing to brag about – and their 12-game losing streak that spanned for over a month was rough – but Hall was still proud of what his team accomplished.
“They never quit, they always fought,” he explained. “Even if they were down by 20, they would never quit until the game was over. And I think that’s what propelled them to where they are now.”
Now, the Panthers are moving forward.
They will graduate six seniors from the team, but starters Obed Simental and Jasen Engel are just sophomores, and sophomore Daniel Fernandez and junior Coby Baer saw valuable playing time this season.
And as Hall said on Wednesday, they’re already working for next year.
“They were upset yesterday when they heard the news,” he said. “So they’re hungry to get going again. They wanted to know when open gym was going to start.”
And if it’s any consolation, the Panthers are moving to the 3A Intermountain League next season, so they won’t have to worry about the peculiar playoff format that accompanies the 4A/5A Southwestern league.