{"id":23512,"date":"2025-02-16T20:12:52","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T03:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-senior-leonard-pours-in-33-to-lead-rout\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:37:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:37:47","slug":"montezuma-cortez-senior-leonard-pours-in-33-to-lead-rout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-senior-leonard-pours-in-33-to-lead-rout\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez senior Leonard pours in 33 to lead rout"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Montezuma-Cortez's
Montezuma-Cortez's Caidin Leonard (2) stretches out and away from Ignacio's Cayson Burcham for a rebound Tuesday night, Jan. 28, inside IHS Gymnasium. Leonard logged 14 points in the Panthers' 77-61 road win over the Bobcats.
\n(Joel Priest\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

CORTEZ \u2013 Nobody in The Jungle was more fired up with the Caidin Leonard\u2019s electric start than Panthers head coach Mike Hall.<\/p>\n

Scarcely two minutes into the contest, Leonard had slashed the nets with four three-pointers, prompting visiting Pagosa Springs to call a timeout. Hall ran onto the court and chest bumped his senior guard before the rest of the Panthers bench swarmed around Leonard.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he (Leonard) started out like that, the whole team starting flowing,\u201d said Hall after Leonard\u2019s opening flourish, \u201cand when he\u2019s able to get into a rhythm like that, this kid is tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 14-point first quarter served as an appetizer for the main course \u2013 a five three-pointer barrage in the third quarter as Leonard and the Panthers ran circles around the visiting Pirates in a 62-36 victory Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The lead nearly reached 40 for stretches of the second half as M-CHS rode Leonard\u2019s hot hand to ensure the Panthers their best finish in the Intermountain League since joining the league in 2016-17. With three IML games to go, the Panthers can\u2019t finish any worse than third, and have the inside track for league runner-up.<\/p>\n

Just as Leonard torched the nets on one end of the floor, the Panthers defense put together a masterclass, limiting the Pirates to five points in the opening eight minutes and only 21 points through three quarters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe defense was incredible, we stopped a lot of what Pagosa was trying to do,\u201d added Hall. \u201cIt was definitely our best defensive performance of the season \u2013 our big kids battled well in the paint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senior Tay Wheat cashed in on several run-outs as the Panthers clogged the lane and turned Pirates possessions into an ordeal. Wheat\u2019s 15 points accompanied eight tallies from freshman Ah-dae Lang and six from sophomore Trey Hall.<\/p>\n

Leonard\u2019s 33 points and nine 3-pointers stole the show, however, and she finished just one triple shy of tying the school record owned by Panthers assistant coach Teagan Whiteskunk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the culture of our team, our staff, our players, they all wanted it for him,\u201d Hall said of Leonard\u2019s pursuit of the school record.<\/p>\n

After their first meeting came down the final minutes in a 55-48 Panthers victory in Archuleta County, M-CHS (15-5, 7-2 IML) took all the drama out of their rematch by halftime, building a 38-15 lead on their way to their first sweep of Pagosa Springs (6-13, 4-5 IML) since 2020.<\/p>\n

M-CHS now turns their focus to Senior Night, where the Panthers will honor three boys and eight girls on Tuesday with their home finale against Ignacio. Coverage of the Panthers-Bobcats doubleheader clash will be available on radio station 92.3 FM and 740 AM KVFC and kvfcradio.com.<\/p>\n

Pagosa Springs 65, M-CHS 16<\/div>\n

Facing the No. 2 team in the state, M-CHS (5-15, 1-8 IML) struggled to gain traction against the visiting Pirates in their third game in five days.<\/p>\n

Senior Taylor Whited scored the game\u2019s first points before the Pirates put together a 19-0 run that set the tone for the afternoon. Whited finished with seven points to accompany six from freshman Kyndall Schmitt, while the Pirates (15-4, 9-0 IML) had three double figure scorers, led by Elizabeth Currier\u2019s 19-point effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Panthers secure highest IML finish in victory over Pagosa Springs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,39,28,37,36],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dolores-high-school","tag-dove-creek-high-school","tag-headlines","tag-mancos-high-school","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23512","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=23512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78155,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23512\/revisions\/78155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23512"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}