Rehoboth Christian gives No. 2 seed Santa Rosa all they can handle before falling in 2A quarters

Posted by Quentin Jodie | Mar 20, 2025 | Sports |

RIO RANCHO, N.M. – With nothing to lose, the seventh-seeded Rehoboth Christian boys basketball team gave No. 2 seed Santa Rosa Lions all it could handle.

The Lynx led by as much as six points before falling to Santa Rosa 44-41 in the Class 2A state quarters at the Rio Rancho Events Center.

“I’m really proud of the guys,” longtime Rehoboth coach Kevin Zwiers said. “They played their guts out, which was exactly what we wanted them to do. We executed our game plan exactly the way we asked them to do it, so I’m just really proud of the entire team with the way they fought and clawed.”

In the game’s final sequence, the Lynx were looking to force overtime as junior guard Trajen West had to shrug off two Santa Rosa defenders for a potential game-tying trey with five seconds to work with. And although he got a clean look, West’s basket didn’t fall through the hoop.

Santa Rosa coach Joseph Esquibel figured it was going to be either senior Kristian Touchine or West to take that final shot.

“We played them before in our home tournament and we knew they were a quality team and we knew they had some great scorers,” said Esquibel, whose team improved to 26-5 overall. “So we knew it was going to be West or Kristian. They’re their two leading scorers so that is who we were focused on them.

“You know, he (West) pumped faked a couple of our guys and he had a good clean look,” he added. “We’re just thankful that it didn’t go in.”

West led the Lynx with a game-high 21 point while Touchine finished with 14 points and eight rebounds. Rehoboth also received a game-best 11 rebounds from senior forward Kodah Chapman, including six defensive boards.

The evenly matched game had eight lead changes and five ties as Santa Rosa got ahead by as much as four (17-13) in the early going while Rehoboth biggest lead (34-28) came at the 3:01 mark in the third stanza when Touchine scored an inside bucket.

“We felt good coming into this game,” Touchine said. “I mean, we were getting the shots that we needed. We were so hyped about playing them because we’re a different team than when we last played them. We just knew we had to be more physical than them.”

After a 13-13 stalemate in the opening quarter, West got going from the 3-point line as he made three treys in the next stanza that helped Rehoboth to 28-23 halftime lead.

Santa Rose closed that gap to 35-32 at the end of the third, and in the fourth the Lions opened the quarter on a 10-3 run for a 42-38 edge with junior forward Josh Cordova and junior guard Maddox Lucero scoring four points apiece.

The two players paced the Lions with Lucero scoring 13 and Cordova chipping in 12. Afterward, both players admitted that they had to work for their points.

“They were playing very aggressive and you just had to find a way a bucket any way you can,” Lucero said.

As for Cordova, he scored eight of his points in the second half after being held to four in the first half.

“I was going against a really good defender,” Cordova said of Rehoboth’s Touchine. “I just had to body him up and I had to take it to the hole. But he’s really big to take it in, so I just thought I could hit a few jump shots and hit a couple of 3s so I had to knock them down.”

Rehoboth finished the season at 21-9 overall, which included a 10-0 mark in District 1-2A play.

“I’m really proud of the guys,” Zwiers said when asked to sum up the season. “We had a tremendous amount of growth throughout the course of the year from where we started to where we finished. The guys just bought into what we were trying to do and they worked really hard at it. This game was a good representation of that.

“Obviously, we have liked to have scored four more points but we’re proud of the work they did,” he added.