Navajo Prep boys overwhelm Wingate with 67-30 win

WINGATE, N.M.

The Navajo Prep boys basketball team came up with a different game plan last Thursday night.

For each quarter, first-year coach Edward Garrison went with his second-string players for the first four-plus minutes. He then inserted his starting lineup and that latter group wreaked havoc for the Wingate Bears as Navajo Prep pulled away with a 67-30 win.

“We’re going to play Wingate at least four times this year, and we wanted to come up with a different look,” Garrison said. “We have a lot of seniors that put in a lot of work, and we wanted to switch it up a little bit.”

With the win, Navajo Prep improved to 15-3 overall and 4-0 in District 1-3A play.

As part of their scheme, the Navajo Prep coach had his first group drop into a zone the entire time they played defense. And when his second unit went in, they played with a “no holds barred” attitude as their speed and press changed the complexion of the game.

“We can win on many phases of the game, and tonight we just challenged ourselves by playing a different style,” Garrison said. “We wanted to see what Wingate was going to do with our first group. And when we got in our junior group, I cut them loose.”

The junior group consists of Aden Clah, Jeremiah Belin, and twins Breyden and Breygen Benally. Garrison added that senior Dylan Lansing and sophomore Iosefo Mauga are also big contributors to that unit.

“They’re tough and they all know how to play,” Garrison said. “They’re fast, so we pressed them, and we played man-to-man; we ran some zone offense and also ran some five-out.”

Of the 11 varsity players, all but one scored for Navajo Prep with Clah leading the way with 13 points. The Eagles also received 11 points from Mauga and 10 from Breygen Benally while Lansing and Breyden Benally each finished with eight.

“Our job was to push the tempo,” Clah said of the second unit. “We noticed that the starting five from Wingate was getting tired and talked about just shooting the ball, get rebounds and play defense.

“Most of our points came from our defense,” he continued, “and once we started to rachet it up, we got hot.”

The Navajo Prep guard says they can score in many ways, and he attributes that to attacking Wingate’s 2-3 zone.

“It’s all about penetration,” he said. “We can all shoot, and when someone penetrates there is always going to be weak side help in that 2-3 zone. Once they help, there is always going to be someone open in the corner, so it’s a matter of using that leverage where we penetrate and kick it out.”

Wingate, which led 4-2 early going, kept the game manageable for 2.5 quarters. The Bears pulled within 32-20 with 4:54 left in the third after a basket by senior guard Matthew Whitehair, who was honored at halftime for scoring his 1,000th point earlier this year.

But that was as close as Wingate would get as the Eagles closed out the quarter on an 8-4 run for a 40-24 advantage. Navajo Prep carried that momentum into the final quarter as they outpointed the Bears 27-to-6.

“Their run took the air out of us,” Wingate coach Larry Smiley said. “Most of their points came off turnovers and that’s their forte. Their defense is their offense and that is what I see in them. They can put it on you, and when you don’t realize it, they’re going to trap you, they’re going to harass you to get that turnover.

“I told my guys all they need is five (points) to get that cushion and from there they know they have (the game),” he added. “But we shouldn’t get it to that point. We got to stay poise. We had to recollect ourselves because we got a little disorganized during that run. A lot of it is we didn’t have that leadership; nobody took over the leadership.”

The Bears found a great deal of success when they fed the ball to junior forward Zefferino Flores as he finished with a game-best 22 points, which included a 6-of-6 effort from the free throw line.

“It’s tough because I know he wants to run the point, but that’s our guards’ job,” Smiley said of Flores. “It’s hard when we can’t get the ball to him, and he gets frustrated.”

Since that 37-point loss, Wingate bounced back with a 60-54 win on Saturday over Tohatchi as the Bears improved to 10-7 overall and 2-2 in District 1-3A play.

Both teams will be in action tonight with Navajo Prep playing at Tohatchi (15-4) while Wingate travels to Crownpoint (3-14).

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