Sometimes, a stumble may help prevent a fall.
The youthful bunch — for the most part — that is the Mesa Vista High School girls basketball team, has risen to the challenge in the middle part of the season after a stumbling 2-7 start to avoid free-falling toward a similar result in what was last year’s 3-24 overall mark.
To be fair to the lowerclassmen-laden group — which features five eighth-graders on the roster — two of their first seven losses came against Class 2A’s fourth-ranked (as of Jan. 31) Pecos High School Lady Panthers, while the other two were suffered to two top 10 teams from 3A in Socorro and West Las Vegas High School.
The Lady Trojans (6-11, 2-1 district) rebounded and had won four of their last seven games, but they suffered a setback in a 77-52 loss to Questa High School Jan. 31 at Mesa Vista Gymnasium.
Questa used a combination of rebounding, strong play in the paint and a higher free throw percentage to break open a game that was a close contest throughout the first 24 minutes.
The Lady Wildcats only shot 11-of-22 from the charity stripe, but it was more than enough to out-duel Mesa Vista, who struggled all night and only converted 11-of-32 attempts.
“We’ve been struggling with rebounding for a while now and we cant make a free throw and we can’t make a layup,” Mesa Vista head coach Bobby Romero said. “The games that we do make our free throws and our layups, we win.”
Mesa Vista battled through foul trouble in the first half and after falling behind as many as eight points in the second quarter after Questa went on an 9-0 run to lead 32-24, The Lady Trojans’ benefited from a strong end to the half by scoring the last four points to trail only 34-30 at the intermission.
In the third quarter, the Lady Wildcats gathered their first double digit lead, 52-41, after Christina Cisneros scored a layup with 1:05 remaining — in what was part of her 14-point performance in the second half where she scored all of her points.
Mesa Vista trailed 54-45 entering the final eight minutes and Questa put the hammer down quickly by scoring the first five points of the quarter.
After Alexis Padilla collected an offensive rebound and converted a three-point play to push Questa’s lead to 59-45, the Lady Wildcats outscored the Lady Trojans, 18-7, to end the game in what was a 23-to-7 fourth quarter advantage.
“In the fourth quarter they took it to us and we hurt ourselves,” Romero said. “In one of the possessions, we shot six layups and didn’t make one. We got fouled and we missed both free throws. Things like that happened multiple times, but that one really sticks out in my mind. I don’t understand why, we’ve just been struggling with it.”
Junior captain Alyssa Suazo had a team-high 12 points for Mesa Vista, Aubrianna Griego and Amarissa Quintana scored 11 apiece and Aubrianna Martinez added eight.
Along with Cisneros, Questa had three other players reach double-digits in scoring. Kiana Passino had a game-high 21 points and Anastacia Gonzalez and Alexis Padilla completed the triplet to score 14 apiece to complement Cisneros.
In the preseason, Romero said winning anywhere from five to 10 games would be a realistic number, so he’s not overly-disappointed with six wins entering the month of February — he’s just most upset about foul shooting.
“I’m almost positive we can win at least eight,” he said. “To do so, and possibly (win) more, we got to learn to fight through this adversity and stuff and try to make it positive. But, I’ve had multiple games now where we have just shot horrible from the free throw line.”