A clean house is a better house.
That was the phrase first-year Northern New Mexico College womens basketball coach Mario Caetano used to describe the situation revolving around the 2019-20 Lady Eagles.
After taking over as the interim coach midway through last season, Caetano has transformed Northern into a completely different, unrecognizable team to any locals who partook in attending games a season ago.
The 16-player Lady Eagles’ roster of all brand new faces came together with solidarity on the opening night of the season, defeating the University of the Southwest 76-70 on Oct. 24 inside Eagle Memorial Gymnasium.
Caetano hired former Lady Eagle player Jocelynn Lackey as his assistant coach, and he warned her prior to game time things might not be perfect, but that wasn’t going to affect the effort from his players.
“I told coach Lackey I didn’t know how we’ll we were going to execute as a team since we’re so new and this is our first game,” Caetano said. “I thought we’d have a lot of jitters, but I knew for sure we would out-tough that, and that’s exactly what we did.”
After Northern led 41-32 at halftime, the Southwest came out surging in the third quarter, and the Lady Mustangs outscored the Lady Eagles 22-12 to take a 54-53 lead into the fourth.
“The third quarter we were flat and they came out and punched us in the face,” Caetano said. “We were probably down eight or nine, and in the fourth quarter, we just decided to D up. That’s what won us the game, our defense.”
The Lady Eagles outscored the Southwest 23-16 in the final stanza behind their defense, and they had to grind out a majority of the second half without leading scorer Haley Eaves (15 points), who had three fouls to her name by halftime.
Overall, Northern outscored the Lady Mustangs 13-0 in second-chance points and 32-22 in the paint, but Caetano was most impressed with his team’s effort on the glass — outrebounding the Southwest 41-33 and limiting them to six offensive boards.
“Our goal was to keep them under 10 (offensive rebounds),” he said. “Allowing them just six, that’s pretty good for us. Every offensive rebound we allow is a six-second sprint the next day, so that’s on them thinking, ‘Am I going to have to put a body on this girl, or are we going to have to run another six-second sprint tomorrow.’”
Zhane Lewis was the second Northern player in double-digits with 12 points, Chris’Alee Patterson had 11 and Ahmaya Smith added 10.
The “scrappy” Southwest squad was carried by 17 points from Harlei Haceesa and 11 and 10 from Elisa Gonzales and Mykal Thomas.
“That was a scrappy team we played,” Caetano said. “That’s a good USW team, and I know a lot of them are new as well with a first-year head coach. They were scrappy, but we were just tougher.”
Northern took its first lead of the fourth quarter 1 minute, 13 seconds remaining on the clock when Eaves drilled a 3-pointer to give the Lady Eagles a 71-68 advantage.
After Kenedi Tanks missed a two-point shot on the Southwest’s next possession, the Lady Mustangs were forced to foul to extend the game.
Northern only shot a subpar 22-of-37 from the charity stripe for the game, but focused in for the final minute, going 5-of-6.