Four years ago, an eighth-grade Anita DeAguero played varsity basketball alongside her older sister, Leah, who was the star of an Española Valley High School team that made it all the way to the state semifinals before losing a heartbreaker to Los Lunas in the final seconds.
Now a senior, Anita was the biggest component of Española’s tournament run all the way to the finals, for the first time in school history, leading the team in scoring in all three rounds.
“I just wanted to win,” said DeAguero. “I wanted to stay positive throughout the all adversity, and I wanted to end it with a bang. And we did. But that’s all I wanted to do.”
“Anita really showed her leadership, showed her basketball skills the whole tournament,” Lady Sundevils coach Joe Estrada said. “Anita was our leading scorer, she was our leader in the huddle, she was our leader in the locker room.”
But her incredible night – with six 3-point makes – was not enough for the No. 2 seed Lady Sundevils, who fell 63-51 to No. 4 seed Gallup at The Pit on May 8. The lady Sundevils’ season ended just one game short of a championship.
“I just told them how proud I was of them,” said Española coach Joe Estrada. “The way they fought so hard. They never once broke the COVID rules. I told them I was proud of how much they had grown up from the time I got there three years ago, and I told them that I knew that, especially the seniors, now they were going to go out and make me even more proud.”
Estrada has now made two final four runs in three years as a coach, and thinks the program is now in a more stable position, and was happy to have over 40 athletes in the program this year.
“The bar has been raised now for the girls program,” Estrada said. “Now we’ve got to go back to work to keep it going.”
The Sundevil fans, who traveled all the way down to Albuquerque, never gave up. Even with a minute left and their team down 16, they broke into yet another loud chant.
“Even though they were wearing masks, I could tell my girls were smiling,” said Estrada.
Despite a solid shooting night from behind the arc, the Sundevils struggled heavily in the paint, and shot just 6-for-22 on 2-point attempts, including several layup misses.
Estrada pointed out that Gallup’s post players had three inches and sixty pounds over those of Española.
“And they got two of them,” he said. “I’m sure not taking nothing away from my team. They sure battled hard.”
After falling behind 10-0 in the opening minutes, the Lady Sundevils kept climbing back but ultimately could not recover.
“We weren’t really shaken up,” DeAguero said. “We’ve came back from a bigger deficit than that. I think we just weren’t ready for the intensity they brought. And we just knew we had to match it.”
While DeAguero’s night was stellar, the other four starters combined for just 19 points, six of which came on deep heaves from Miranda Salazar in the final minute after the game was out of reach. Not counting those two shots or DeAguero’s, the team was just 3-of-19 from deep and 9-of-39 (23 percent) from the field. Gallup, meanwhile, shot 53 percent in the game.
“I think we were hoping they’d miss more shots,” Estrada said jokingly. “You can’t come back as long as they keep hitting shots.”
But the Sundevils never gave up the entire length of the game. After a timeout down 10-0, Destiny Valdez immediately responded with a 3-pointer, and the Sundevils quickly scored 12 points in the final 4:35 of the first quarter. The trouble was they still could not slow down the Bengals, who put up 20 points in the first quarter alone including four 3-point shots.
After the early hot shooting, the Bengals began dominating inside the post. All told, they scored 34 points in the paint, including 12 in just the second quarter, to Española’s 10,.
The Sundevils managed to cut the deficit to 24-21 early in the third quarter, but every time they came close Gallup would go on their own run. They ended the half on a 13-2 run.
But after falling behind by 16 in the second half, the Sundevils came alive to score eight straight points, and one of DeAguero’s 3-pointers finished the quarter and cut the deficit to just seven with momentum seemingly on their side.
But then the Bengals scored the first nine points of the fourth quarter, quickly gashing hopes of a comeback. DeAguero did everything in her power to keep Española close, seemingly unable to miss, but could not get the help from her teammates, while shots kept falling for Gallup.
“This year, I knew I had to step up and be a leader, and not just watch,” said DeAguero. “This year, with the seniors, it was amazing. We’ve been playing since we were little kids, all together. The love is there, the trust is there, and it probably won’t ever go away.”
Even with four minutes to go, though, the Sundevils were within 10 points, but Gallup kept scoring from inside, and led by as many as 19 in the final minutes, and ultimately won by 12.
The Sundevils had only allowed more than 50 points once all season, a 57-46 early-season loss to a Cleveland team that was double overtime away from a spot in the 5A semifinals. So 63 was their worst defensive performance.
“They had shooters,” said Estrada. “They had scorers.”
Perhaps most troubling, the Española defense only had 10 steals and scored a total of 13 points off turnovers, numbers far lower than their norms throughout the year when the aggressive press would turn the ball over at midcourt and get easy baskets. It did not help that they were also outrebounded 39-21, allowing more offensive rebounds (12) than they grabbed on that end (11).
Jasmaine Baca, the leading scorer during the regular season with 10.5 points per game, failed to hit a single field goal at 0-8 from the floor.
“Those are probably the best guards we’ve seen this year,” said Estrada. “I watched several films on Gallup, and I knew Gallup was good. But I think Gallup just played the best game of the season against us. Which is what you have to do to win a championship game.”
The Sundevils will have to regroup next year losing potentially all eight players who appeared in the final game, should Jordan Torres and Cameron Conners decide to return to Santa Fe Indian School for their senior seasons. All five Española starters this year were seniors, including DeAguero and Valdez who played five seasons on varsity and made three runs to the Final Four. Valdez will be continuing her career at Northern New Mexico College.
All six seniors have been on the varsity roster for Estrada’s entire tenure.
“The hardest part of today is to realize I’m not walking back in the gym with these guys to practice or to play anymore,” said Estrada. “They really became leaders. They really helped me teach those younger girls what it is to work hard and what it is to set goals and what it is to reach those goals.”