Five teams from Northeastern New Mexico competed in the eight quarterfinal games for the NM State Class A basketball championships on Wednesday, March 7 in Bernalillo, and three of them, the Des Moines Lady Demons, the Springer Red Devil boys and the defending Class A champ Maxwell Bears, advanced to the semi final round on Thursday.
The Lady Demons began the session early at Bernalillo High School Spartan Gym, against the #5 seed Coronado Lady Leopards and aggressively took control and went on to a convincing 63 – 47 win. Makenna Hittson lead all scorers with 21 and Angie Lopez contributed 18 and Grace Hill 12.
Des Moines semifinal opponent is the 7 time defending state champ Elida, who earned the berth with a 56 -33 win over the Lady Cimarron Rams. Cimarron had chances early to stay with Elida, but the shots wouldn’t fall for them as senior Reina Arguello had 17 in her last game as a Ram.
The Roy/Mosquero Lady Blue trailed the #3 seed Quemado Eagles by only three at the half, but could only muster 4 points in the third period while Quemado was netting 17 en route to a 52 -31 victory.
Roy/Mosquero’s Riley Clavel had 20 and the Lady Blue went 0 for 7 from behind the arc, and ended their Cinderella run having earlier upset the #6 seed to qualify for the quarterfinal.
Both boys teams won including Maxwell’s 61-47 win over # 7 seed Floyd and Springer’s convincing upset of #3 seed Reserve 63 – 41.
Maxwell’s Kolton Riggs and Carl Gonzales both had double-doubles with Riggs netting 29 points and grabbing 11 rebounds while Gonzales was matching the number of boards with 13 total points including 3 distance three-pointers.
Springer wrapped up the day’s action with a solid win over #3 seed Reserve. Sophomore Gabriel Garcia played inspired ball by grabbing 15 rebounds, adding five steals, all while putting in 17 points including three first half threes that gave Springer an insurmountable 18 point lead at intermission. Teammate Brian Romero also had a good game as the senior lead all scorers with 18.
Maxwell’s and Springer’s victories, set up a rematch of last year’s State Championship final with a berth into this years final the incentive for the 6:30 pm tipoff on Thursday.
Both games, Des Moines girls versus Elida at 1:15 pm and Maxwell vs Springer @ 6:30 will be broadcast on KRTN FM 93.9 and streamed on Network1Sports.com.
