Bears eye district title with romp over Eagles

(Special to the Times - Donovan Quintero)

Wingate's Cordarell Yazzie shoots as Crownpoint's Karl Gore, left, and Tyler McCray try to block him Tuesday night in Fort Wingate. The Bears easily defeated the Eagles, 77-28.

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The Wingate Bears have the number four on their minds.

There are looking for their fourth district championship in a row.

"We want that fourth consecutive district championship," said coach Al Martinez. "That's our No. 1 priority.

"Regular season champion - of course that's where it begins with, and so that's what we want, what we want to do," he said. "We've got some goals set and that's what the kids are working for."

On Tuesday night the Bears got a District 1-3A win over Crownpoint, 77-28, making them 3-0 in their district.

The Bears came out in their traditional fashion, with quick feet and even quicker hands that forced Crownpoint into five turnovers before the Eagles made their first basket. Wingate began the game with an 11-0 run.

With both teams playing their first game since winter weather caused the cancellation of local games last week, Martinez said the teams came out a little rusty.

"Crownpoint's going through transition and it's tough, tough to gauge what tonight's performance is, but we're real happy with where we're at, 3-0," he said. "They (Crownpoint) haven't had a chance to practice much because of the weather and same with us.

"We missed all those games last week like everybody did, and we were hoping to be a little bit further up where we're at," he said. "We got the big game Friday night with Bloomfield."

Early in the first half the Bears went on yet another run, going into the half up 33-14.

With a couple of close games against other teams in the district, Crownpoint head coach Jaime Herrera said his team knew that Wingate would come out running.

"We were losing to Newcomb 24-22 at half, we were losing to Bloomfield 22-16 at half, so we've shown that we can play with some of the good teams," he said.

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"We didn't show it as much tonight but, you know, we wanted not to run with Wingate but to slow them down," Herrera said. "We had too many turnovers overall. We were down 19 at half time and we lost by a whole lot more than that but that's how it goes, I have a very young team."

At the half Crownpoint had 32 turnovers and Wingate had 10.

Martinez hopes to fine-tune his guys. In the second half against Crownpoint, Martinez switched players in and out and 11 of the 12 team members had scored by the end of the game.

"We played a really aggressive preseason schedule and we've had a lot of competition, and you know the district top to bottom is not as tough as it has been," he said. "Right now it seems to be a three-team race, four teams possibly.

"Really it's us, Tohatchi and Bloomfield, so during that time you kind of get the opportunity to play the rest of the kids," he said, "which makes it nice. They work as hard as the starters and they deserve to play, and so the focus now is to get everybody playing so that when we do need some of those guys on the bench they're ready to go. We're real fortunate to be able to play everybody."

The Eagles knew where they stood in the highly competitive district so for them the game was about trying to improve.

Herrera said with a young, inexperienced team like his it's all about trying to get better and using the tough games to do it.

"We just haven't put four quarters together but we've had some really great halfs," he said. "We're losing just by two points or six points, then the second half we kind of don't do as well, but we've improved.

"I think Tohatchi, Wingate and Bloomfield are the top three teams," he said. "To play four good quarters, that's my goal."

 "We've been real fortunate to have some good kids the last three years and this year's no exception," Martinez said, "and I'm looking forward to contending for the regular season crown and the things that go along with it.

"We're looking to host the first-round game and trying to get out of the first round, that's the goal."

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