1A playoffs: St. Michael girls advance, Rock Point bows out
Navajo Times | Quentin Jodie
St. Michaels guard Autumn Shirley (5) dribbles the ball along the baseline while being guarded by the Rock Point Lady Cougars on Saturday during the championship game of the 1A North Canyon Super Regionals tournament. On Tuesday night St. Michaels defeated Baboquivari, 51-14, to advance into the 1A state quarterfinals.
WINDOW ROCK – Three days after losing the championship game in the super-regional tournament, the St. Michael girls basketball team bounced back in a big way.
The fifth-seeded Lady Cardinals held No. 12 Baboquivari to seven points in both halves on Tuesday night during the opening round of the Arizona 1A state playoffs at the Ganado Pavilion in Burnside, Arizona. St. Michael advanced with a 51-14 win.
“Our pressure caused a lot of turnovers,” St. Michael coach Carl Adams said in a phone interview on Wednesday morning. “That is where a majority of our points came from, so our defense caused a lot of havoc.”
In other 1A tournament action, defending state champs Rock Point were eliminated as the Lady Cougars came up short to No. 6 Mogollon on the road.
Mogollon advanced with a 53-49 win as Rock Point ended its season at 16-10 overall.
In Burnside seven of the available eight players scored for St. Michael with seniors Cameron Hanley and Autumn Shirley leading the way. Hanley finished with 16 points and Shirley added 15 as the two players scored most of their points in the second half.
“Usually, Autumn tends to go off in the first half,” Adams said. “And for Cameron, it’s opposite and she goes off in the second half. They both complement each other and the player that gets them going is Siara Manuelito.
“She’s the one that breaks down the defense and she rotated that ball to both Cameron and Autumn,” he added.
The St. Michael coach said his team played with a “chip on their shoulder” after coming up short to archrival Rock Point 49-41 in the title game of the 1A North Canyon Super Regionals tournament on Saturday at Flagstaff High School on Saturday night.
“That kind of lit a fire under them,” Adams said. “The girls took that personally and they executed on the things that we didn’t do in that last game.
“They were stopping kids, making sure they don’t drive and making sure they don’t shoot,” he added. “Those were the things that they were doing last night.”
The Cardinals will now face No. 4 seed Lincoln Prep on Friday night at 7 p.m. in Chandler, Arizona.
“I don’t know much about Lincoln Prep, but they have one really good player,” Adams said. “She pretty much scores about 85% of their points.
“We’re going to go in there doing what we do best,” he added. “We just have to make sure that we’re executing while having fun through the process.”
Highway 264,
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