John Lomasney Invitational: Tohatchi welcomes challenge of playing Carlsbad in finals
GALLUP
Navajo Times | Paul Natonabah
Carlsbad’s Kasha Montoya (55) tries to block Tohatchi’s Kalian Mitchell’s (5) shot in the third quarter of John Lomasney Invitational championship game on Saturday night at Gallup High. The Lady Cavemen ran past the Lady Cougars, 66-35.
For Tanisha Bitsoi, it was an odyssey worth undertaking.
If she had insisted otherwise, her girls basketball program would have not enlisted the experience they need to get over the hump when it comes to the upcoming state playoffs.
Her Tohatchi Lady Cougars reaped the rewards of playing Carlsbad High School in the finals of the John Lomasney 42nd annual Gallup Girls Invitational on Saturday night.
“I wish the outcome could have been better, but it gives them confidence,” Bitsoi said following their 66-35 setback. “There is a reason why we have a tough schedule going into the postseason. When we get to the state tournament the competition is a lot different, so I think it’s important for us to face teams like this.”
When she saw the bracket, Bitsoi admitted that she liked their chances of playing in the championship game with teams of local flavor.
On the other side of the bracket, she was unfamiliar of the two programs — Carlsbad and Rio Ranch Cleveland — that made the winner’s bracket.
As it turned out, her team faced the Carlsbad Lady Cavemen, the top-ranked Class 6A school. Carlsbad had seven players taller than 5-09 on their roster and that made a big impact.
The irony, according to Bitsoi, is that she told her team they probably won’t face another team that featured big girls like they did when the played Las Vegas Robertson last month.
“This is real good experience for them and we are going to learn from this and move forward,” she said.
With the benefit of having good size, Carlsbad stuck to their game plan and controlled the pace of the game and seized an early 13-2 advantage in the first six minutes of the game.
“We had the size advantage and we were going to use it,” Carlsbad coach John Zumbrun said. “We were not going to get into an up and down game with Tohatchi. We’re fast at the guard position, but at the post position, we didn’t match very well.”
Zumbrun said their style of play clicked for them as they made every attempt to get off a good shot or earn a trip to the free throw line.
When you have big kids, you can’t run up the floor like Tohatchi and Gallup do,” he said. “We had to control the pace.”
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