Wildcats’ rally comes up short
Navajo Times | Ravonelle Yazzie Surrounded by defending San Carlos Braves, Chinle’s Cooper Burbank (10) shoots the basketball from under the net on Dec. 9 during the Choice Wireless Classic at the Wildcat Den in Chinle. San Carlos outlasted the Wildcats 49-46 in the championship game.
Navajo Times | Ravonelle Yazzie
Surrounded by defending San Carlos Braves, Chinle’s Cooper Burbank (10) shoots the basketball from under the net on Dec. 9 during the Choice Wireless Classic at the Wildcat Den in Chinle. San Carlos outlasted the Wildcats 49-46 in the championship game.
CHINLE
The San Carlos Braves used two runs at the end of the first and second quarter to build a double-digit lead before holding off Chinle’s late comeback attempt.
Senior guard Christian Noise scored 20 points, including 12 in the opening quarter, as San Carlos eked out a 49-46 win over the Wildcats in the championship game of the Choice Wireless Classic at the Wildcat Den last Saturday night.
After trailing by as much as 15 points when Noise hit his fourth trey with 2:38 left in the third, Chinle held San Carlos to only four points the rest of the way.
Chinle coach Raul Mendoza said his team gave a good effort in coming back but his team needs to understand that they need to put everything on the line and be ready to play from the get-go.
“In the first half we weren’t quite there but in the second half we came back,” he said. “We had a chance to pull out. A shot … would have made a difference. The little things mattered but it was great effort on our part. We came back.”
San Carlos scored its last basket at the 1:55 mark of the third and heading into the fourth they were still up 47-38.
In the last stanza, Chinle scored two quick baskets from Angelo Lewis to pull within 47-42 with 6:02 remaining. San Carlos then milked a lot of time off the clock as Chinle was forced to foul late in the game.
That strategy nearly worked as San Carlos made 2-of-6 free throws in the final 31 seconds of the game.
“I thought we did OK but we had a few fouls off of our screens and we had some turnovers,” San Carlos coach Terry Antonio said. “We tried to move the ball from side to side and we try to emphasize that during our timeouts.”
Antonio said they tried to pick apart Chinle’s defense with that stall tactic since nobody likes to play defense a long time.
“We had some opportunities but we didn’t execute early on the possession,” he said. “They are still kids and we’re going to learn from this. We’re going to go back and re-emphasize how important free throws are and how important ball control is.”
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Highway 264,
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