The Pojoaque Valley High School girls basketball team was faced with a matinee Jan. 5 and instead of snacking on popcorn, the Elkettes ate through the Santa Fe High School Demonettes.
They never trailed from start to finish in their noon tipoff at Santa Fe and the Elkettes left Toby Roybal Memorial Gymnasium with a 68-30 win to remain perfect at 12-0 (Pojoaque hosted St. Pius X Tuesday, but those results were not available by press time).
“The girls had some fun today and we needed some fun,” Pojoaque head coach Seledon Martinez said. “We came out focused at the beginning and they came out focused to start the second half. Their focus was beautiful today.”
The blowout over Santa Fe (5-9) followed up the Elkettes’ come-from-behind 62-60 overtime win Jan. 3 on the road at Hope Christian. Trailing by as many as 17 points in the first half, Pojoaque came back to tie the score at 57-all at the end of regulation and held on for the win after a last second shot by the Lady Huskies in overtime rimmed in-and-out.
“I told them, ‘OK, we let them have their run and there’s no such thing as a 17-point basket,” Martinez said about the comeback win. “We took it one basket at a time and it was a great win because Hope is like a benchmark in basketball — both boys and girls.”
Two days later against the Demonettes, Pojoaque led 28-10 at halftime and closed the door shut on Santa Fe by opening the second half with 11 straight points.
Adrianna Quintana and Michaela Martinez both led the way with 12 points, Hennessei Calabaza had nine and all 11 players who suited up etched their names into the scoring column.
The Elkettes held Santa Fe to scoring quarters of four and six points in the first half, and the Demonettes didn’t pick up their second basket of the first quarter until just 17 seconds remained. They also went on a 4 minute, 4 second scoring drought in the second quarter.
Taylor Salazar gave her all for Santa Fe and was their lone player scoring in double-digits as she finished with 10 points.
Even winning by such a large margin, the damage could have been much worse if the Elkettes capitalized more around the rim. They missed countless layups in the first half and missed 16 free throws in all (14-of-30).
“We missed some gimmes,” Seledon Martinez said. “I’m trying to instill to the girls when we go in to take those layups to go 100 miles per hour. Right now, against Santa Fe it might not mean much, but against Gallup, Carlsbad and Portales, if you miss those kind of layups, you lose by 30.”
Those teams aforementioned have been on the mind of the head coach since his team’s schedule for this season was finalized. Pojoaque will see all three Thursday (1/10)-Saturday when they head southeast to the Portales Shootout and Seledon Martinez said his team will have to be on their toes for the whole, combined 96 minutes.
“We got to get away from the mindset that we can throw it away on this possession and come back the next time and be OK,” he said. “We are turning the light switch off and on and we can’t do that against those teams.”