Navajo Prep boys capture first state title

ALBUQUERQUE – Navajo Prep boys basketball entered uncharted territory on Saturday afternoon.

The Eagles played in their first state title game, and they came out winners thanks to a knockout blow in the third quarter en route to a 60-50 win over Las Vegas Robertson in the 3A state championship game before a large crowd at the University of New Mexico’s Pit in Albuquerque.

Navajo Prep outscored the Robertson Cardinals 23-2 in said quarter, which erased a nine-point halftime deficit. The Eagles made 10-of-16 baskets in that period alone as they rode that momentum to match the Navajo Prep girls’ feat on the previous day. (The Lady Eagles captured the 3A girls state title on Friday, winning 41-26.)

The boys state championship game was a rematch of last year’s semifinal when Navajo Prep fell to the Cardinals, 49-36.

“It’s amazing,” Navajo Prep coach Matt Melvin said of his team’s state tournament run. “I’m just so proud of this group of guys. This means a ton. The first one is always special, right?

“With this group, just the season that we’ve had, the stuff that we’ve gone through,” he added. “The journey is just amazing, and this caps it off.”

Robertson led 6-0 before the Eagles scored their first basket, a putback from senior post Orion King with 4:31 left in the first period.

Navajo Prep later tied the game at 10-10 on a three-pointer from senior guard Tylen Morris with two-plus minutes remaining before Robertson took a 14-11 lead going into the second quarter.

In the highly competitive second stanza the lead changed hands two times and there were five ties, but with two minutes left Robertson finished out the quarter on a 10-0 run to go up 31-22 at the break.

“We did not finish that first half great,” Melvin said, while adding that his team had a lot to talk about in the locker room.

Whatever was said during those 10 minutes lit a fire under the Navajo Prep team. Jude Thomas set the tone in that quarter as the senior guard put in nine of his 16 points to give the Eagles a 45-33 lead after three quarters.

“A lot of the guys are seniors, and I didn’t want to go out with the same fate that happened last year when we lost to Robertson,” Thomas said. “I knew that if we wanted to turn the tide, I had to start it. These guys were able to hit some big shots. We got on a big run … and you slowly felt the momentum shift.”

Defensively, the Eagles held Robertson to 1-of-7 shooting while turning them over six times in that third stanza.

“To put up a two-point defensive effort in the third quarter in a game like this is amazing,” the Navajo Prep coach. “That is what we talked about going into the fourth, which was to keep up with what we were doing on defense.”

Navajo Prep picked up where it left off at the start of the fourth with King hitting a pair of inside jumpers sandwiched between a trey by junior shooting guard Xavier Nez.

A two-point basket by Jakobie Thomas earned Navajo Prep its largest lead at 54-39 with 3:51 left.

Robertson eventually righted its ship late in the fourth, but it was too late as the Navajo Prep student section got louder and louder.

“In the last couple years, we’ve learned a lot in what it takes to get to this point, in what it takes to kind of get over that hump and be the last team standing,” Melvin said. “That was our mission this year to put the toughest strength of schedule we could, but a lot of people don’t know as we went through a lot of adversity going into that. We didn’t have this group; we lost some guys going into that. We didn’t say anything, and we didn’t make excuses.”

The Eagles had three players in double figures headed by King, who finished with 18 points and 14 rebounds. Thomas added 16 and Nez chipped in 13.

King, who stayed out of foul trouble, played an instrumental role in limiting Robertson’s damage with second-chance points.

The Eagles grabbed 36 boards to Robertson’s 19. Of the Eagles’ 36 rebounds, 22 were on the defensive end as the Cardinals did not get any second-chance points.

“They have some good guys who are really tall and big,” King said of Robertson players Nathan Gonzales and Mateo Contreras. “The one-and-done is what we talk about in our program, that and pushing the ball in transition … I think getting those defensive stops and having those rebounds was huge for us.”

On the other side of the spectrum, Navajo Prep earned 17 second-chance points as it had a 14-5 edge in offensive rebounds over Robertson.

“We’re never the biggest team so everybody is just a group effort to get the ball,” Melvin said. “But, yeah, when you can find 14 second-chance opportunities with some those are threes, and some are putbacks for (King), man, it’s just huge.”

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