{"id":28906,"date":"2024-03-03T03:54:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-03T10:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lady-panthers-historic-season-ends-in-3a-sweet-16\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:44:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:44:45","slug":"lady-panthers-historic-season-ends-in-3a-sweet-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lady-panthers-historic-season-ends-in-3a-sweet-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady Panthers\u2019 historic season ends in 3A Sweet 16"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Panther
Panther senior Markylla Jones dribbles around Bayfield's Madison Mead in a contest at Bayfield High School. Ben Bradley\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

YUMA \u2013 For a team that dreamed big all season, the Montezuma-Cortez girls basketball team didn\u2019t want anyone to wake them up.<\/p>\n

Historic wins over league opposition. The program\u2019s first winning season in the lifetime of any of the current players. A new high-water mark win total.<\/p>\n

The list of accolades for a feisty Panther squad could go on for pages. And while its state tournament dreams faded in Saturday\u2019s 51-29 loss to Yuma, Montezuma-Cortez walked off the court for the final time with their heads high.<\/p>\n

Less than 24 hours after another historic benchmark victory over Meeker placed the Panthers (12-11) in the Sweet 16 of the 3A tournament, the offense was unable to get things going against the fifth-seeded regional hosts, as Yuma (15-8) constructed a 26-12 halftime lead and pulled away in the second half to advance to the Great Eight at the University of Denver\u2019s Hamilton Gymnasium.<\/p>\n

The loss ended the careers of five highly-influential seniors in Savannah Haselroth, Markylla Jones, Kayce Tom, Trenity Tillahash and India Wright, a group the helped pave the foundation for future Panther success on the hardwood.<\/p>\n

Haselroth\u2019s 22 points and Jones\u2019 17 guided the Panthers to the 70-60 win over Meeker on Friday night. On the larger scale, the Panther seniors collected unprecedented success against league foes Centauri (beating the Falcons as members of the Intermoutain League for the first time), Alamosa (Montezuma-Cortez\u2019s second win in the same span), a three-game sweep of Ignacio, and a top-three finish in league play for the first time as IML members.<\/p>\n

The Panthers also earned their second season with double-digit wins in the past three years, further indicating the program continues to trend upward as a motivated new wave of players will take the helm next season.<\/p>\n

Montezuma-Cortez boys\u2019 season ends<\/div>\n

For significant stretches of the state tournament opening round matchup with 10th-seeded Banning Lewis Academy, the 23rd-seeded Panthers (8-14) looked right at home, scoring in stride with the Stallions to keep pace in their 3A matchup in Meeker.<\/p>\n

However, the well began to run dry during a stretch in the second and third quarters, as the Stallions stretched their lead to 20 points. The Panthers made one last push, but ultimately fell short 66-51.<\/p>\n

The loss ended the careers of seniors Easton Hartsoe, Gael Garcia, and Raul Soto. However, Montezuma-Cortez showed promise for the future, improving its record over each of the past three seasons, while claiming fourth place this season in the Intermountain League and taking third in the district tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montezuma-Cortez caps first winning season in decades, first postseason victory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28907,"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-28906","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\/28906","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=28906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80574,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28906\/revisions\/80574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28906"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}