<\/p>\n
Coming off a lopsided defeat, the Dolores Bears boys basketball team entered their Jan. 18 contest against Nucla desperate for a win.<\/p>\n
Such desperation paid off for the Bears, who, playing with energy and grit, defeated the Mustangs 71-36 in front of a near-capacity Dolores crowd.<\/p>\n
Looking every bit the dominant team from the opening tip, the Bears utilized a full-court press to force countless Nucla turnovers, which in turn were converted into several fast-break buckets.<\/p>\n
Facilitating many of those buckets was junior Mikeal Ford, who scored a game-high 25 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did what we needed to do,\u201d said Ford, who highlighted his big night by drilling consecutive three-pointers to begin the third quarter. \u201cWe executed our press and things went as planned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also playing well for the Bears was Ben Lykins, who, demonstrating strength down low, pulled several offensive rebounds on his way to 16 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been working on getting physical all year,\u201d said Lykins. \u201cWe\u2019re not one of the tallest teams in the league, but we can fight for the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such fight proved vital for the Bears, who, after taking a 17-7 lead at the end of the first quarter, expanded their lead to 42-22 at halftime.<\/p>\n
After continuing to apply pressure during a third quarter that ended with the Bears leading 63-27, Dolores emptied its bench during the fourth quarter and coasted to victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe worked all week on moving the ball,\u201d said clearly pleased Bears\u2019 head coach Larry Schwartz. \u201cThey listened and they did real well.\u201d<\/p>\n
With their record now at 4-5 on the year, the Bears will return to the practice floor before facing off against Ouray in Dolores on Jan. 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ford’s 25 points, strong defense, key 71-36 Dolores victory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6362],"tags":[188],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-121966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ds-sports","tag-dolores-star"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121966","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=121966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121966"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=121966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}