Tuba City girls rally past Holbrook

HOLBROOK, Ariz. – The Tuba City girls basketball team has entered a new era under first-year coach Michael Balcerek.

Balcerek replaced longtime coach Kim Williams, who guided the Lady Warriors to a state runner-up finish in 2015.

“First of all, I got a very good group of girls,” Balcerek said. “They’ve been playing for a while with the previous program under Kim Williams. She did an amazing job, so kudos to her. Stepping into this role, all these girls are really fundamentally sound.”

In Balcerek’s coaching debut, Tuba City trailed 45-41 with 5:05 left against the Holbrook Lady Roadrunners. The Warriors, however, turned the tide as they closed out the game on a 13-0 run to post a 54-45 win on Saturday afternoon.

“The girls played well,” Balcerek said. “They played exactly how they were supposed to. We didn’t do anything different that we didn’t practice. They played composed, and they did everything that I could ask for them. I’m very proud of them.”

During that stretch, Holbrook missed six shots, including four from long range.

“We kind of hit a wall shooting-wise,” Perkins said. “I think our legs got to us. We’re not in great shape yet, and Tuba did what we knew they were going to do.

“We knew we had to get back on defense and we didn’t,” the Holbrook coach added. “They shot one three, and they shot a lot of transition layups. That’s what they do, and they’re good at it.”

Tuba City junior forward Aubrey Begaye scored five of her game-best 22 points in that 13-0 rally as the Warriors outscored Holbrook 17-5 in the last stanza.

“I think what really helped is coach wants us to be in basketball shape,” Begaye said. “When it came down to the end, we kind of knew that we could pull through because we had the will to keep going.”

Tuba City guard Eriana Begay also praised the team’s endurance for outlasting Holbrook.

“Well, our coach really just lifted us up,” Begay said. “When we began that fourth quarter, he reminded us that our conditioning is going to pay off in this quarter.

“We used our conditioning to gain our confidence in the fourth quarter, and we’re a good, structured team defensively, and we use that as that as our advantage.”

The Warriors also received 15 points from Justice Nez with the junior scoring more than half of those points in the second period. Nez scored six straight as Tuba City erased a five-point deficit and trailed 28-27 at the break.

“Both girls are phenomenal players and they’re in shape. They know how to play the game of basketball the right way,” Balcerek said of Begaye and Nez. “They limit their mistakes, and they capitalize on the easy shots. They don’t miss wide-open layups. They are aggressive. And one thing that’s great about them is that they’re both juniors, so they’re going to grow into seniors next year.”

Tuba City is entered in the Black Friday Girls Basketball Classic in the Valley on Friday and Saturday. The Warriors opened up the 35-team invite with 2A Miami at 2 p.m. and 4A Saguaro at 6:30 p.m.

“That’ll be our first tournament this year,” Balcerek said. “Obviously, the competition is going to different from the region up here and all the northern teams. We’re looking forward to going down there and showing them what these girls are capable of.”

For Holbrook, senior Deya Guerro and freshman Channing Harrington shared the top scoring honors with 13 points each.

Entering Saturday’s contest, Holbrook defeated Window Rock 62-31 the day before as the Roadrunners fell to 1-1 overall.

“We played really hard (on Friday) night,” Perkins said. “Window Rock was the state runner-up team last year, but they graduated like six seniors. To be honest, I was more worried about last night because we haven’t played Window Rock in three years.

“I didn’t know a lot about them, and we played with a ton of energy,” he added. “Last night, the fans were good both ways and we played really hard.”

With three returning seniors that saw plenty of playing times, Holbrook is looking to return to how they used to play, which is playing man-to-man defense and shooting from the three-point range.

“We’re going back to the style of playing full-court defense,” Perkins said. “Tonight, we couldn’t really do that because (Tuba City) was shooting a lot of layups off of us. We got tired, so we had to back away from that.

“But last night, we picked up full court man from the start and we got a good jump on (Window Rock),” he added. “We just kind of kept building on it, and everybody had a lot of fun.”

As for taking more shots from the outside, Perkins says his team is well-equipped to knock down those shots.

“We have some pretty good shooters, so it kind of changes the style back to what we used to do as far as transition,” the Holbrook coach said. “But it’s one of those things where they say, ‘You live by the three, and you die by the three.’”