The Lady Sundevils didn’t need any extra motivation, but Abigail Rodarte went ahead and gave them some anyway.
The Española Valley High School girls basketball team honored the former student and athlete — who died in a car crash on July 8, 2018 — with a moment of silence prior to the Lady Sundevils’ home game against Capital High School Jan. 18 at Edward Medina Gymnasium.
The team came out of the locker room wearing commemorative tee shirts for warmups and when they took them off, the Lady Sundevils (9-6) raced and pressed their way to a 68-47 non-district win over the visiting Lady Jaguars (6-9) from Class 5A.
Fueled by their ferocious full-court press, Española forced Capital into 10 first quarter turnovers, helping them build an insurmountable lead, 27-5, after the first eight minutes.
The Lady Jaguars opened the game with three turnovers on their first three positions and the duo of Kaylee Chavez and Destiny Valdez made them pay. Chavez started the game with three-point play, which was followed by a 3-pointer from Valdez.
On the next possession, Chavez cashed in on the third turnover as well, picking the pocket of a Capital player and racing the other way to lay in two points in transition with 5:48 left in the first quarter to help Española begin the game on an 8-0 run.
The guards carried the Lady Sundevils in the scoring column, as Chavez had a game-high 13 points, Jasmine Baca recorded 12, Kaylinn Martinez and Valdez each chipped in 11 and Anita DeAguero had nine.
The combination of all those guards accounted for 55 of the team’s 68 points, mainly resulting directly from their willingness to play the aggressive defensive style first-year head coach Joe Estrada has implemented since the Rio Rancho Tournament back in mid-December.
“It really gets the momentum going early,” DeAguero said about the press defense. “We feel like, even if we make a mistake, it doesn’t matter because the rest of the team is right there to pick us back up. Once the defense gets going, the offense just comes easy.”
Despite the swarming defensive effort, Estrada was quick to note how well of a shooting night the Lady Sundevils had. Their aggressive nature also carried over to the offense, as they shot 24 free throws and converted on 18 attempts.
“That’s the best we’ve shot all year and I thought we did a great job at the free throw line tonight and that was huge,” Estrada said. “Early in the season, because we weren’t playing this aggressive style of basketball, there were games where we only shot two or three free throws.”
Moving forward, Estrada said “the mental part of the game” will be the area that needs most improvement, which was evident when Capital — trailing 44-21 at halftime — cut the lead to 48-31 with 3:12 left in the third quarter after opening the second half on a 10-4 run.
“When they cut it down to 16 or 17, we just played really silly for awhile there,” Estrada said. “We threw some really bad passes and made some really bad decisions, but we talk about that all the time: that it’s a process and we pushed that lead back up again.”
The win against Capital gave Española their fifth win in six games, in which they have outscored their opponents by an average of 22.6 points per contest.
“Oh, Definitely yeah,” DeAguero said when asked if things were clicking for the team at the right time. “We’re all coming together now and everything that happened last year is in the past and were all focused on our one goal, which is to win.”
The Lady Sundevils (9-7) made the long trek to Gallup High School the following night on Jan. 19 and were defeated 58-39 by the third-ranked Lady Bengals.
Española opened district play against Pojoaque Valley High School Tuesday at home, but those results were not available by press time. Their next contest will be a road game at Moriarty High School at 7 p.m., Saturday.