{"id":24078,"date":"2025-01-08T06:04:56","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T13:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/maestas-22-points-lead-durango-past-montezuma-cortez\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:48:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:48:03","slug":"maestas-22-points-lead-durango-past-montezuma-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/maestas-22-points-lead-durango-past-montezuma-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"Maestas\u2019 22 points lead Durango past Montezuma-Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Mariah
Mariah Maestas of Durango High School puts up a shot while playing Montezuma-Cortez High School on Tuesday at DHS. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

On Tuesday night, the girls high school basketball game between Durango and Montezuma-Cortez looked like a duel between two senior guards inside Durango High School.<\/p>\n

Durango\u2019s Mariah Maestas and Montezuma-Cortez\u2019s Taylor Whited exchanged shots from all over the court. Whited was especially hot from 3-point range in the first half and carried her team with 17 points. Maestas finished inside and stepped out for a few 3-pointers on her way to 22 points.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Panthers fans, Whited didn\u2019t have the supporting cast Maestas did and the Demons cruised to a 58-36 victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the first half, it was apparent that we hadn\u2019t played a game in two and a half weeks,\u201d Durango head coach Lauren Moran said. \u201cWe were pressing a little bit to try and score and get opportunities that weren\u2019t there, which I attribute to everybody being a little bit overexcited about getting back on the court and playing at home; we haven\u2019t played any home games since the first game of the season. Once we settled in the second half we played much better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Demons improved to 7-2 overall after the win. Maestas\u2019 22 points were a season-high. She was 6-6 from the free-throw line and hit two 3-pointers.<\/p>\n

Junior guard Claire Goodwin finished with 12 points for Durango. She hit a 3-pointer and was 5-8 from the free-throw line. Senior forward Ellie White had 11 points for the Demons.<\/p>\n

Montezuma-Cortez fell to 3-5 overall after the loss. Whited\u2019s 17 points came off five 3-pointers and a 2-pointer. Junior guard Sariah Jackson had 11 points for the Panthers.<\/p>\n

\"Sariah
Sariah Jackson of Montezuma-Cortez High School puts up a shot against Durango High School on Tuesday at DHS. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThere were a lot of highs and lows,\u201d Montezuma-Cortez head coach Brad Wright said. \u201cTurnovers killed us; they were really the deciding factor of the game. We played defense pretty well for most of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a sloppy start to the first quarter with both teams struggling with turnovers. Durango tried to force a lot of passes in tight windows and paid the price. Maestas had the first four points for Durango off some nice penetration.<\/p>\n

Montezuma-Cortez looked like it had a fast break layup to open up its scoring. But Maestas looked like she was shot out of a cannon and flew in for a chase-down block.<\/p>\n

The Demons continued to defend well and cause turnovers but missed many easy looks. Most of their offense came on the fast break thanks to their strong press.<\/p>\n

Durango executed a nice baseline out-of-bounds play as time expired. White finished an open layup to put Durango up 12-3 after one. The teams combined for at least 15 turnovers in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

Wright attributed the Panthers\u2019 turnovers to his players still trying to find themselves. Montezuma-Cortez graduated a lot of key seniors last year, according to Wright.<\/p>\n

Both teams stopped turning the ball over as much to start the second quarter. Durango was aggressive and got to the free-throw line. Montezuma Cortez\u2019s top offensive option early on was Whited. She was the only one who could consistently penetrate or shoot from the outside. Whited hit back-to-back 3-pointers to cut Durango\u2019s lead to 18-14 with 4:10 left in the second quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t respond to that as quickly as we should have,\u201d Moran said about Whited. \u201cShe\u2019s a strong player \u2026 we didn\u2019t do a great job of recognizing that and increasing focus on her until we were able to come in at halftime and then say, \u2018Number one is the one that\u2019s hurting us.\u2019 Then we locked in and did much better defensively.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Panthers\u2019 fouling early in the quarter caught up with them as Durango got into the bonus for the last few minutes. After its lead was cut to two, Durango went on a 6-0 run.<\/p>\n

Maestas and Goodwin pushed the Demons to a 32-21 halftime lead despite some incredible plays by Whithed. She couldn\u2019t miss from 3-point range and was active on the defensive end. Whited had 14 first-half points.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s the one that makes us go,\u201d Wright said about Whithed. \u201cShe gets us into our offense and whenever she\u2019s getting buckets like that, it\u2019s a shot in the arm.\u201d<\/p>\n

The start of the third quarter mirrored the first quarter with both teams turning the ball over. The Demons moved the ball well in transition for easy scores. Goodwin was great at drawing fouls to get to the line. She hit a tough layup in transition to increase Durango\u2019s lead to 44-30 with 1:30 left in the quarter.<\/p>\n

Maestas continued her stellar showing to end the quarter. She cut toward the basket and finished a layup. On the next possession, she drove into the paint and kicked it out to junior Ryne Neiman for a midrange jumper at the buzzer to put Durango up 48-30.<\/p>\n

\u201cMariah played a really good game both offensively and defensively,\u201d Moran said. \u201cWe\u2019ve talked to the whole team about how every single game it could be a different person who could lead us in scoring; it could be a different person who\u2019s asked to guard their best player. You want to have that kind of depth where you know you have multiple people who can score in double digits every single night. That just makes us a lot stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montezuma-Cortez started the fourth on a 5-0 run but then started to turn the ball over again. Durango passed the ball beautifully in transition to rebuild its lead.<\/p>\n

The Demons hit the road to play at Canon City on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. It\u2019s the first game of the Canon City tournament for Durango.<\/p>\n

Montezuma-Cortez plays at Centauri on Jan. 17 at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n

bkelly@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

58-36 in first game of 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[950,592,28,680,642,36,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango","tag-durango-high-school","tag-headlines","tag-high-school-girls-basketball","tag-high-school-sports","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\/24078","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=24078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78390,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24078\/revisions\/78390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24078"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}