{"id":29175,"date":"2024-02-17T23:17:46","date_gmt":"2024-02-18T06:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-tops-ignacio-in-girls-basketball\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:50:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:50:06","slug":"montezuma-cortez-tops-ignacio-in-girls-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-tops-ignacio-in-girls-basketball\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez tops Ignacio in girls basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=9098d6b9-5b37-5a85-8346-2af75d2bb4ff&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"576\" height=\"384\" alt=\"Ignacio junior Marissa Olguin (left) tries keeping the ball safely away from Montezuma-Cortez's Trenity Tillahash (5) on Thursday night. Montezuma-Cortez defeated Ignacio, 58-44. (Joel Priest\/Special to the Herald)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Ignacio junior Marissa Olguin (left) tries keeping the ball safely away from Montezuma-Cortez's Trenity Tillahash (5) on Thursday night. Montezuma-Cortez defeated Ignacio, 58-44. (Joel Priest\/Special to the Herald)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Milah Begay\u2019s first 3-pointer \u2013 a first-quarter bank shot \u2013 Thursday evening simply made Montezuma-Cortez\u2019s good start even greater, helping spark a 13-4 start.<\/p>\n<p>Ignacio junior Marissa Olguin had closed out the opening eight minutes with a 3-pointer, making it a 13-9 game, and both sides went back and forth well into the third quarter.<\/p>\n<p>The Lady Panthers then pulled ahead en route to a 58-44 victory Thursday night at IHS Gymnasium.<\/p>\n<p>Ignacio entered intermission down just 29-24, but after M-CHS junior Taylor Whited began the third quarter with a steal, the margin grew to 31-24 after zipping the ball ahead to Begay for a layup.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHuge \u2013 and she\u2019s just a freshman,\u201d Montezuma-Cortez coach Brad Wright said when asked if Begay was M-CHS\u2019 X-factor. \u201cBut those threes in the first half were monstrous; that\u2019s what really kept the momentum going for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Montezuma-Cortez improved to 10-9 overall and in 6-4 3A\/4A Intermountain League play. Ignacio fell to 7-12 overall and 3-7 in league play.<\/p>\n<p>Ignacio senior Solymar Cosio converted a Mendoza-Lechuga feed into two points to stay within two possessions at 37-30 with 1:11 left, but Montezuma-Cortez soon seized control for good.<\/p>\n<p>Just 20 seconds into the final frame, the writing was on the wall for Ignacio. Montezuma-Cortez\u2019s Sariah Jackson grabbed back-to-back offensive rebounds, netted a basket off the second one and drew a foul, resulting in a free throw to widen the gap. The Lady Panthers led 42-33 and started pulling ahead.<\/p>\n<p>Olguin cashed her game-high fourth trey with 2:39 remaining for Ignacio to make it a 49-38 contest, but it was too little, too late for the Lady Bobcats.<\/p>\n<p>Whited finished with 15 points for Montezuma-Cortez, while Olguin scored 15 points for Ignacio.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the things we\u2019d worked on the past couple days is execution,\u201d Wright said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been without (injured senior) Savannah Haselroth \u2013 she leads us in so many things on our team, as well as composure \u2013 so for the girls to pull together and actually execute, play the game \u2026 I\u2019m really proud of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Panthers win regular-season finale, 58-44<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[680,642,846,36,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-high-school-girls-basketball","tag-high-school-sports","tag-ignacio-high-school","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\/29175","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=29175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80658,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29175\/revisions\/80658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29175"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}