By Marty Mayfield
KRTN Multi-Media
West Las Vegas travelled up the road to Raton for a district game and took home the win as the Raton’s varsity struggled to get the ball to drop through the hoop Friday evening.
The boy’s C-Team played their game at Raton Intermediate School gym Friday afternoon and came away with a crushing loss 74-19.
While the boys played across town the girls played as a JV team in Tiger Gym. The Raton girls for district play transitioned to a JV team rather than go up against the district varsity teams which are made up of mostly Juniors and Seniors. As Raton battled the West JV it was a low scoring game with West going into halftime ahead by five, 9-4.
The second half of the game saw Raton come alive and drop in nine in the third and 10 in the fourth to match West and at the final buzzer it was a time game at 23. A Jump ball starts the overtime period and both teams quickly score. The battle goes down to the last seconds of overtime with Raton making a three spot and managing to hold off the Lady Dons to end the game 30-29.
The boys JV game followed with a similar result to the C-Team as West took the early lead and never looked back as West held Raton to single digits while posting 23 and 24 points in the first half of play. With a big lead West Coach Joseph Nieto was able to give his bench much needed playing time. Even the bench was able to hold down the Tigers and left them with only nine e points in the second half, going scoreless in the fourth quarter. The final score ended at 63-17.
The Boy’s varsity game followed up with West taking the early lead as Raton simply struggled to get the ball to fall for points. West built up a lead going into halftime with a 37-22 lead. After halftime Raton came out and began to battle back and slowly shorten the West lead down to nine but couldn’t seem to break that nine point barrier.
The battle continued with Raton getting into foul trouble and sending Isaiah Garcia to the bench in the fourth leaving Raton with five players with four fouls each. Those fouls helped West to hold on to the lead going better than 66% or 24 of 36 attempts at the line while Raton went 11 of 17 attempts or about 64% at the line. As the final buzzer ended the district game West took home the win 69-53.
C-Team Boys
WLV 28 21 10 25 74
Raton 3 14 2 0 19
JV Girls
WLV 6 3 6 8 6 29
Raton 4 0 9 10 7 30
JV Boys
WLV 23 24 8 5 63
Raton 3 5 9 0 17
Varsity Boys
WLV 22 16 11 21 69
Raton 11 11 14 17 53
West High Point
PJ Montano 16 4 of 4 free throws
Lucas Archuleta 12 3 of 4 free throws
Jonathan Gonzales 10 2 of 5 free throws
Free throws. 24 of 36 attempts
Raton High Point
Wyatt Berry 12. 1 of 3 free throws
Mario Alvarez 13 2 of 2 free throws and 3 3-pointers
Free Throws 11 of 17
