Rehoboth cruises by Dulce behind Kristian Touchine’s season-high performance
Navajo Times | Quentin Jodie
Rehoboth Christian senior Kristian Touchine (13) drives in and puts up a layup against the Dulce Hawks. Touchine finished with a game-best 28 points, helping Rehoboth to a 65-44 win.
REHOBOTH, N.M. – The Dulce Hawks had no answer for Rehoboth Christian senior post Kristian Touchine.
On Friday night, Touchine delivered one of his best performance this season as the 6-foot, 4-inch center finished with 28 points.
Touchine made 13 baskets, which included five on putbacks as Rehoboth secured a 65-44 win during the Lynx homecoming night.
“I mean, he’s really athletic,” longtime Rehoboth coach Kevin Zwiers said of Touchine. “He can jump, and he can finish, right? And so he brings in a really tough dimension to take care of. I mean, you got to guard him, you got to try and box him out and that’s not an easy task.”
Touchine scored at least five points in each quarter with his best one coming in the fourth when he put in a dozen points for Rehoboth.
“I have the ability to jump over everyone,” Touchine said of his will to crash the boards that contributed to his total point total.
“Having that (athletic) ability gives me an opportunity to get after those boards,” he said. ‘But I’m not the only that can rebound. We got plenty of people that can rebound, so I’m not the only one that’s contributing, it’s the other guys, too.”
His coach concurred.
“(Kristian) is really athletic, but there’s a lot of other guys, you know, that did a good job tonight,” Zwiers said. “Kodah (Chapman) did a good job on the boards, too. For a good part of the game, we did a good job defensively so, yeah, it’s always a team effort.”
Of the four quarters, Rehoboth’s second-quarter defense wreaked havoc for the visiting Hawks as Rehoboth extended a 17-10 first-quarter lead and turned it into a 35-14 halftime cushion.
“Our second-quarter defensive effort was really good,” Zwiers said. “We forced turnovers, which gave us easy run outs and to easy scores. If we can continue to build and keep that effort through an entire game, we’re a tough team.”
With that 21-point cushion, the Lynx held Dulce at bay in the second half despite receiving 11 points from sophomore guard Adolf Vigil, who shared top team scoring honors with senior guard Michael TeCube.
On Tuesday, Rehoboth improved to 11-8 overall and 4-0 in District 1-2A play after defeating Hózhó Academy 74-25. The Zwiers-coached team will wrap up the first half of the district season today with a home game with Ramah.
“We’re trying to take it one game at a time,” Touchine said. “We want to win our district and make the state tournament. The biggest thing for us is we’re trying to get as far as we can in the playoffs.
“I feel like we can compete with anybody because this whole season a lot of people don’t get that we’ve played some top schools in 3A and 2A,” he added. “I think that is why we’re kind of (ranked) low. But we’ve been keeping up with those top teams, you know, losing by less than 10 points and losing by less than five.”
When asked about its playoff projections, Zwiers said it was too early to say where his club will be seeded in the Class 2A bracket.
“There is so much basketball to be played yet, so it’s kind of hard to tell where that seeding stuff will be,” Zwiers said. “There are some tough teams that are above us that are in tough districts, and we’ll have to see how the other districts play out.
“In the end, it’s a giant math problem. I don’t know how they’ll do it, and so we got to control what we can control and that’s the next game on our schedule. If we do that, the seeding will take care of itself.”
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