\n <\/p>\n
Over the next two hours, the party only intensified as the M-CHS boys basketball team dribbled circles around Durango en route to a 64-30 victory.<\/p>\n Jasen Engel led the Panthers in scoring with 17 total points, and after the game, the senior spoke about the significance of his team\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n \u201cBeating Durango twice in the same year, and this time in front of our home crowd, is the pinnacle for us right now,\u201d Engel said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been winning some games, and that brought a lot of people in. It was a good crowd, and we\u2019re pretty happy.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the keys to the Panthers\u2019 convincing victory was the ability of junior Cordell Baer and senior Austin Foxworth to control the boards as the two big men pulled down numerous offensive rebounds.<\/p>\n Baer pulled six offensive rebounds and scored four points during the final 3\u00bd minutes of the first quarter to help M-CHS pull ahead 15-4. Early in the second quarter, Foxworth brought the crowd to its feet with an offensive rebound and score that put the Panthers ahead 19-4.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we\u2019re on offense, we always want to get the ball under the rim and go right back up,\u201d said Foxworth. \u201cWhen we\u2019re playing defense, we don\u2019t want to let them get any (offensive rebounds). Rebounding was important for us tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n While Panthers\u2019 big men dominated inside, M-CHS guards did an outstanding job of controlling the pace of the game and generating fast break opportunities.<\/p>\n Senior Mario Espinoza played a key role in several fast breaks on his way to seven first-half points. Sophomore Teagan Whiteskunk provided one of the night\u2019s most memorable highlights when he caught the ball in transition, spun around a defender near midcourt, and broke free for an uncontested layup and put his team ahead 24-7.<\/p>\n \u201cWe felt good playing together,\u201d Espinoza said. \u201cWhen we have chemistry, we work together and come out fired up. I try to provide people with that extra kick to get going, and I was in there to step up.\u201d<\/p>\n Leading 30-11 at halftime, M-CHS received significant contributions from its bench players during the third quarter as junior Jens Jorgenson grabbed several rebounds and senior Roman Montoya scored two of his five total on an elbow jumper to put M-CHS ahead 46-20.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just confident, and my teammates boosted me,\u201d Montoya said. \u201cThey told me to shoot the ball, and I knocked (some shots) down.\u201d<\/p>\n Not to be overlooked in the Panthers 34-point victory was the play of the Panthers\u2019 defense, which forced Durango into difficult shots throughout the night and created numerous turnovers.<\/p>\n While several M-CHS players played a key role in locking down Durango, none played a larger role than senior Kolby Waltman, whose intensity on the defensive end shown bright throughout the night.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew if we played defense, there was no way that they were going to be in the game,\u201d Waltman said. \u201cWe played killer defense.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to Engel\u2019s 17 points, M-CHS received 16 points from Whiteskunk, 12 points from Baer, 9 points from Espinoza. Sophomore Martin Cuntz led Durango in scoring with 13 total points.<\/p>\n Now 8-5 on the season, M-CHS will prepare for a critical home games against Bayfield and Alamosa, which will take place on Jan. 26 and Jan. 27, respectively. The contest against Bayfield is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m., and the matchup with Alamosa will begin at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" M-CHS seniors relish 64-30 win in front of big crowd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[600,13,36,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-basketball","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101414"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}