Upgrade it to a frozen shooting night for the St. Michael’s girl’s basketball team in Tuesday night’s District 2-3A quarterfinals tournament setback to visiting West Las Vegas

By Arnie Leshin 

It was cold outside, but inside the Perez-Shelley Memorial gymnasium, St. Michael’s was simply “ice cold” in the sloppy 48-32 loss to visiting West Las Vegas in the District 2-3A tournament quarterfinals Tuesday night.

 

The two had split its two games of the regular season, and with this defeat, St. Michael’s has lost both at home. This one dropped the 3^rd seeded Lady Horsemen to 11-15 overall, but might fall from 8^th in the overall state rankings, and could be left out of the 16-school field for the state tournament.

 

“My gut tells me that we’re still an 8 (seed),” said head coach Martin Esquibal, “but you know, I’m not really sure, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

 

If it does get to state, it had better practice putting the ball in the basket, and this including foul shooting. With the disappointed home fans looking on, St. Michael’s was a dismal 12-for-59 from the field, 8-for-18 from the charity stripe, and added 23 turnovers.

 

The 4^th seeded Dons (17-10) welcomed this.  It advanced them to the semifinals at 2^nd seed Santa Fe Indian School that they lost, and the Braves now go against top-ranked, first place Robertson (25-1) in Las Vegas.

 

At this point, West Las Vegas, Indian Schooland the Cardinals are a certainty to play at state, the Lady Horsemen could sneak in. although after this poor performance, they could fall further down in the rankings. Plus they probably lost a first-round home court playoff spot for teams seeded 1-8.

 

Neither team scored for the first five minutes. St. Michael’s, though, made good on only one of 13 shots, and were down 9-4 after the first quarter. It crept to within 18-15 at halftime despite missing 22 of 27 shots and turning in 13 turnovers.

 

In the third quarter, the home side fell further behind. The Dons went to the low post duo of Amarie Rodriguez-Vigil and Skylin Morgan and they scored their team’s first 13 points of the second half. From a 19-19 tie, it became an 11-point gap heading into the final eight minutes.

 

An 8-2 run by WLV began the fourth quarter and put the game completely out of reach, especially since St. Michael’s couldn’t make shots.

 

Esquibal said he doesn’t recall ever seeing such a poor shooting display.

 

“Hitting 12 of 59 or 60 is the worst we’ve done all season,” he said. “It could have been the pressure of needing to win and trying to get a higher seed on Sunday, so I think we needed to relax a little bit and we never did.”

 

High scorer for his team was senior JoelynFernandez with eight points, but no one else had more than six. It did take down 49 rebounds, 25 coming at the offensive end, but didn’t make a single 3-pointer.

 

This is now history. Now it’s a look ahead and a shot at landing in the state tournament. This is yet another shot that the Lady Horsemen hope they don’t miss.