Colts can't handle Wolverines in Texico

NMMI Sports Press
TEXICO — It was another tough night for the Colt basketball team (0-3) Thursday, as they fell to defending 3A state champ Texico 81-24.
NMMI never led, but coach Christian Stevens was pleased with how they came out on the floor.
“We played a lot better,” he said. “We came out in the first quarter and played really well. We had a good warmup. We switched up the warmup today. It was the most intense one we’ve had, and we played the best quarter all year in the first quarter, and it just decreased from there.”
The Wolverines led 23-12 after one, then 28-17 at the half. But the second half saw the Colts only manage seven total points.
“Once the starters came out, the game was never really the same,” Stevens said. “It’s going to be really hard to win a game when we only made two field goals in a half. I thought we played a really good first half, but the second half the ball just wouldn’t drop. It wasn’t going into the rim and you can’t beat anyone if you can’t score.”
Despite the big loss, Stevens had praise for several of his players.
“Fabian Martinez is a guy I would never not play in a game because of his effort,” the coach said. “He out-rebounded our whole team offensively and he got to the line the most. He’s not our best shooter so it’s not going to show up on the stats, but he shot more free throws than the entire team together because he was rebounding, attacking the basket, doing every thing I asked him; always a standout performance from Fabian Martinez. Great effort from Fausto (Baranzini) and I thought a great first half from (Jesus) Luy and Johnny (Juan Reyna), but I don’t think they played great second halves.”
Baranzini got seven points to lead the Colts in scoring, and, the coach said, “He brought the energy. He kept to the game plan. He attacked the basket. Our goal was to get them in the bonus and we got them into the double bonus, and Fausto really forced that issue.”
After scoring less than 50 points combined in the last two games, it won’t get any easier next week. NMMI travels to 5A Goddard Monday, and Stevens knows what the team has to do to be competitive.
“We’ve got to become more disciplined, for one, sticking to the game plan,” he said. “We can’t have just four guys doing what I asked them to do. We’ve got to have all 14 collectively working on winning the games. And second of all, they’ve got to learn how to score. We shoot all week. We dribble all week. We do everything all week and then once we get to games we forget how to score. The main thing is, when we’re playing other schools, they’re going to score on us because that’s basketball. It’s not because we don’t play good defense. It’s because we can’t score, so when they run off, we don’t run with them. We’ve just got to learn how to put the ball in the rim.”
The JV team also lost — no information was available — but the C-team opened their season with a win, topping Texico 33-20. The young Colts got scoring across the board, led by sophomore Michael Carrejo with eight.