Chinle, Ganado girls come up short in 3A semis

PHOENIX – The streak is over.

For the first time since 2020, the Arizona Interscholastic Association crowned a 3A girls state champion not from the 3A North.

Top-seed Chinle and No. 3 Ganado were eliminated on Friday night at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix. The two rez teams came up short in their respective semifinal games as No. 2 Snowflake and No. 5 Payson played in the title game with Snowflake winning 49-37 on Saturday afternoon.

Of the two teams, Chinle saw its season come to an agonizing end as Payson erased a 21-point third-quarter deficit and won 53-51 on a late bucket by senior point guard Hannah Sarnowski, who finished with a dozen points.

“We just had a collapse,” Chinle coach Francine McCurtain said. “When they don’t play up to their potential and when they play into their defense, things like that can happen.”

After playing composed for the first 18 minutes of the game, McCurtain acknowledged that the fifth-seeded Lady Longhorns rushed her team.

“We had like 20 turnovers in the second half alone,” she said. “If you don’t take care of the ball and when you don’t stay with your fundamentals, any team can gain momentum and that is what (Payson) did.

“And when our defense started to breakdown, we started to make mental errors,” she added. “When that all happened, we ended up losing confidence in what we were doing.”

Chinle seized its largest lead at 39-18 after an inside bucket from senior Dizhoon White with 6:32 left in the third as the sizable crowd inside the arena sensed the Wildcats were headed into the title game.

But the Longhorns rallied and close that gap and trailed 45-33 heading into the fourth thanks to a 15-6 run. Payson carried that momentum into the final stanza as the Longhorns nailed three consecutive treys – two by senior Alondra Ramirez – to get within 45-42 with 5:52 remaining.

Payson took its first lead of the night following a 6-2 run as a layup by Sarnowski put the Longhorns ahead 48-47 with 1:50 left.

The lead changed hands two more times as Payson took a 51-49 advantage with 42 seconds remaining following a trey by Ramirez, who finished with a team-high 15 points.

A pair of free throws from senior Noelle Walker tied the contest at 51-all with 27.8 seconds, but Sarnoski earned her 12th point with three seconds left to send Payson into the title game.

“Well, first off credit to Chinle,” Payson coach Chaz Davis said. “They’re absolutely incredible and I think a lot of us felt like they deserved a chance to win a state title.

“I mean, they’re extremely well-coached, they’re extremely well-disciplined,” he added. “You know, they have some very talented players, so I was heartbroken for them as they were coming off the floor. I want all the kids to win and as the head coach I felt they (Chinle) played a heck of a game.”

As for his players, Davis conceded that his club is “a streaky team” and when they get going, they can get hot.

“That is what happened for us in the fourth quarter,” the Payson coach said. “At halftime, we could have folded and say ‘Good job, Chinle’ or we come out and go down swinging.

“I felt like we did that in the second half and I thought we played phenomenally,” he added.

Like the Longhorns, Chinle had two players in double figures with senior Qoah Yazzie leading the way with 25 points while White added 10 points and 13 boards.

Yazzie put in 18 of her points in the opening half as she outscored the Payson by a point as Chinle took a 34-17 cushion at the break.

“Qoah played a great game but she got into foul trouble so we had to take her out,” McCurtain said. “My other guard Jayden Lynch got into foul trouble and she fouled out. We had some heavy-hitters that we normally rely on and they had to sit for a while, which was a lot longer than we expected, so we had to use our bench a little bit more.”

The Wildcats finished the season at 22-2, which excludes all regular season tournament games. Despite coming up short, McCurtain labeled the season as a successful one as Chinle is set to graduate five seniors in Alyssa Williams, Lynch, Walker, Yazzie and White.

“The girls put in a lot of effort in making history at Chinle,” she said. “I’m just proud of the girls and, you know, I have five seniors and it’s going to be hard to lose them because they set the tone and the standard for this season.”

Ganado girls

The Snowflake Lady Lobos threw in a new wrinkle with their defense as it limited Ganado’s ability to find any offensive flow. That scheme worked as the Lady Hornets dropped a 60-44 decision.

For much of the night, the Lobos badgered senior guard Faith James and junior point guard Jasah McIntosh as the two players finished with 16 and 12 points, respectively.

“Snowflake put their best two defenders on Jasah and Faith, like we expected them to do,” Ganado interim coach Abigail Benally said. “They played great defense on us. We were getting flustered out there and I feel like there was a lot of nervousness on our part.”

Those nerves didn’t kick in until the second stanza as the Hornets got into a good rhythm with junior forward Jayanna White putting up five of her seven points in the first three minutes of the game.

White’s 3-pointer earned Ganado an 8-2 cushion with 5:22 left. Despite being outscored 10-5 for the rest of the period, Ganado led 13-12 with McIntosh leading the way with eight points, which included a 2-for-3 effort from beyond the 3-point arc.

The complexion of the game, however, took a drastic turn as Snowflake finished the next stanza with a 25-point outburst. The Lobos made 10-of-25 shots in that quarter, which included four timely 3s.

Defensively, they held Mcintosh in check as James picked up the slack scoring 10 of the Hornets’ 12 points as Snowflake seized a 37-25 halftime cushion.

“When we set our game plan, McIntosh was our focus,” Snowflake coach Mike Brogan said. “Faith is heck of a player, and I have nothing against Faith because we knew she was going to get her 15 points no matter what we did with her.

“But McIntosh is the kind of player that makes them go,” he added. “She’s the ballhandler and she’s the one pushing the ball. She’s the one that makes the right decisions for them, but I thought we did a really good job on her.”

Other than a couple of rotations in the opening quarter where the Lobos left McIntosh open, Snowflake put a body on the talented guard for much of the game.

“We corrected that because in that first quarter we gave her two open 3s that we were unhappy with, but we did a great job after that with her,” Brogan said. “We worked really hard on the quick help to stop penetration and it worked pretty well.

“We had a good effort and the kids bought into the game plan and that showed,” he added.

The Lobos stretched its 12-point halftime lead into a 49-27 cushion with 2:27 to go on a 3-pointer from senior Kenadi Stuart as Ganado could not recover from that deficit.

Offensively, Snowflake had four players in double figures with junior power forward Ryah Denhalter scoring a team-best 16 points. Senior guard Nicole Hipps chipped in 13 while junior Bryn Kupfer and Stuart added 10 apiece.

Offensive rebounds also played a key in Snowflake’s win as the Lobos won the rebounding battle 54-to-35. Of those rebounds, Snowflake snarled 28 on the offensive glass that led to 19 second chance points.

“We’ve been a good rebounding team all year and that is where we’ve hung our hat,” Brogan said. “We don’t shoot the ball that great, but we play hard to where we get some transition baskets and we get some offensive rebounds.”

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