Gallup tops Artesia in finals

GALLUP

In their home tournament, in front of their fans, the Gallup Bengals wanted to show Artesia their style of basketball.

The Bengals turned up the heat and gave the Bulldogs a run for their money to win the championship game of their tournament by a 60-45 count.

Gallup first-year head coach James Voight said it was the type of show-and-tell he and his coaching staff requested from his team and they executed it thoroughly.

“We pressed them, we wanted wanted to pressure them, we wanted to get them going up and down and play our style of basketball,” he said. “We wanted to outwork them and when you do outwork them, balls start going your way and that’s what happened.”

Though the end result was in the Bengals’ favor, the game plan didn’t exactly play out as smoothly as they had wanted.

Artesia came out strong. They had some slow starts in their two previous games of the tournament, but bounced back in time for the championship game.

They worked their inside and outside shooting game to take an early lead and led Gallup 15-12 after the first quarter.

Gallup came roaring back in the second quarter and took their first lead of the game at 21-20 with 4:31 left in the first half.

The Bulldogs tied the game at 23-23 before taking back the lead late in the second quarter.

At the half, Artesia led 31-27.

Artesia head coach Michael Mondragon said Gallup’s sixth man got involved in the second quarter which eventually got into his team’s heads and it allowed them to let Gallup sneak back up on them.

“We come here for a reason, to get better, and that’s going to be a state tournament environment right there,” he said. “You might not have a crowd, you may be the one playing from behind, you may be the one not at a home game, but like I told our guys, you have to be better than the crowd, you have to be better than the officials and I thought we did a good job.”

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