3A North Region Tournament Ganado Tuba girls advance into today’s semifinals

By Quentin Jodie
Navajo Times

FORT DEFIANCE – The Ganado girls basketball team will have another crack at top-seeded Chinle in today’s semifinal of the 3A North Regional Girls Basketball Tournament sponsored by Marathon MPLX Corp.

The fourth-seeded Lady Hornets earned that right after outlasting No. 5 seed Monument Valley, 59-51, in the first of two first round girls games on Thursday at the Bee Hóldzil Fighting Scouts Events Center in Fort Defiance.

“That’s the game that we want,” Ganado coach Galen Williams said of tonight’s matchup. “The first game we played with them we lost by nine points, but I feel like we should have won that game. The second time we played them; we lost our lead in the fourth quarter with two minutes left, so we want to get back at them.”

The semifinal game between Ganado and Chinle, which had a first-round bye, is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. The winner of that game advances into Saturday’s championship game, which is scheduled for a 3 p.m. tipoff.

In the bottom half of the sixth-team bracket, No. 3 Tuba City made easy work of No. 6 Window Rock, which went 0-11 against 3A North opponents this season.

The Warriors led 16-4 after the first quarter and won 69-43 as Tuba had 10 players score at least two points en route to the 26-point win.

“That’s the one thing that I’m very thankful of my team because everybody steps up,” first-year Tuba City coach Michael Balcerek said of his team’s balance scoring. “I don’t want the production to go down when I put the bench in there. I want to keep the same intensity, which we did tonight.”

Ganado

After trailing 38-31 with 2:26 remaining in the third, the Hornets used a 14-4 run to overtake Monument Valley with senior Faith James and junior Jasah McIntosh taking charge offensively.

James scored seven and McIntosh added five during that pivotal stretch as Ganado entered the fourth quarter with a 45-42 advantage.

The Hornets pushed their lead to as much as seven points, but MV did not go away as a basket by Skylynn Raye got the Mustangs within 51-48 with 3:16 to go.

But a 5-0 spurt by McIntosh changed the trajectory of the game as Ganado moved into tonight’s semifinal game.

McIntosh led Ganado with 25 points while James added 20

“To be honest, we just brought each other up,” James said. “Everyone was contributing, and our chemistry just came together in the third and fourth quarter.”

The Mustangs received a team-best 24 points from senior post Keiryn Mann as she had 15 of those points in the opening half as MV lead 27-23 at the break.

Mann received some help early in the third with freshman forward Tayana Sherlock scoring six of her eight points helping MV to that 38-31 cushion.

Ganado, however, received a spark from the James/McIntosh combo that put them over the top.

“We’re a second half team,” Williams said. “We try not to trail teams but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

“I think we were just trying to find each other in the first half,” the Ganado coach added. “Once they found each other, we got explosive in that second half.”

Tuba City

It took a few minutes for the Tuba City girls to find its groove, and when they did the Warriors were in cruise control the rest of the way.

The Warriors were held scoreless for nearly four minutes, but a trey by senior Natasha Acothley (nine points) opened the floodgates for the third-seeded Warriors as Tuba led 16-4 entering the second stanza.

“We really do preach on starting out strong and we really went off each other’s energy,” said Tuba guard Eriana Begay, who had a team-best 14 points. “We love to hype each other up and once we start to get going, we’re going.”

Window Rock, meanwhile, was ice cold at the start of the game as they went 1-of-14 in the first eight minutes. Junior Kourtney Bitselley hit the Scouts’ only basket at the 2:48 mark.

The Scouts had better clips in the next three periods, but Tuba continued to pad its lead.

“Well, first of all, Window Rock has such a good team, and they have such a good coach,” Tuba City coach Michael Balcerek said. “We know that this is their home court, and we knew they weren’t just going to let us take the win. We had to actually earn it.

“In those first four minutes, man, they pushed us,” Balcerek said. “They played really good defense on us and after Natasha made that 3, it really lit a fire underneath us.”
Window Rock was led by sophomore Aliana Begaye as she came off the bench and put up 14 points. Veteran guard Davae Willie chipped in 10.

With the 26-point win, Tuba will now focus on No. 2 seed Page as the Sand Devils earned a bye in the opening round. The Warriors came up short to the Sand Devils twice this season with Page winning 46-44 and 56-55.

“We’re hoping that the third time’s the charm,” Balcerek said. “Page is such a good and composed team. They got a great coach over there as well. They obviously won (the state title) last year, and they still have that competitive fight in them.

“We want to go into tomorrow riding the confidence from today’s game,” he added. “We want to go in there and play our style of basketball, which is defense.”

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