In the end, though, the afternoon belonged to Ignacio junior Brady McCaw, who scored a game-high 26 points and carried his team during a decisive fourth quarter that began with the Bobcats leading 37-35 and ended with them holding a 10-point advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrady McCaw was able to go off in the fourth quarter \u2013 credit to him,\u201d Knepper said. \u201cAll year, we talked about playing with our hands up. During the fourth quarter, we were closing out the shooters with our hands down like we\u2019ve never practiced before, which is unfortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before Ignacio\u2019s fourth-quarter run, the back-and-forth contest brought fans to their feet as both sides deftly moved the ball and produced big plays.<\/p>\n
The first quarter, highlighted by tough Bobcats man-to-man defense and balanced Bluejays scoring, ended tied at 12 points apiece. Ignacio gained a small advantage and pulled ahead 24-23 by the end of the second quarter, which was marked by physical play on both sides.<\/p>\n
As the third quarter got underway, Mancos briefly seized the momentum as Caden Showalter aggressively drove to the basket and scored on his team\u2019s opening possession of the half. Sehnert followed with a transition 3-pointer from the left corner to put the Bluejays ahead 28-24.<\/p>\n
Ignacio fought back, however, and after a long jump shot by senior Keegan Shurman, an offensive rebound and put-back by junior Bryce Finn, four free throws by McCaw and a buzzer-beating offensive rebound and put-back by sophomore Gabe Tucson, the Bobcats built a 37-35 lead heading into the final quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you want to play on defense, man or zone?\u201d Ignacio head coach Chris Valdez asked his players as they huddled before the fourth quarter. After McCaw, Finn and others responded that they wanted to play man-to-man, Valdez smiled before exclaiming, \u201cThis is our time.\u201d<\/p>\n Feeding off the energy of their coach and excited by their aggressive defense, Ignacio began the final period on fire and eventually built a 50-44 lead with 2:48 left after McCaw drained a 3-pointer from the wing.<\/p>\n After Shurman knocked down a long 3-pointer from the left corner moments later to go ahead 53-44, the game was all but over. The Bluejays battled until the end, but the victory they desired was not to be.<\/p>\n Doing his best to remain optimistic, Knepper noted that learning moments come in all forms. He emphasized that he expects his underclassmen to expand on the season next year.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you can learn a lot more from losses than you can from wins,\u201d Knepper said. \u201cI had a coach my freshman year of high school \u2013 he said don\u2019t come back next year because of how (wins) feel \u2013 come back next year because of how you feel after a loss.\u201d<\/p>\n Although their loss was a disappointing end to a memorable season, Mancos players kept their heads held high.<\/p>\n \u201cI love playing with my teammates; they\u2019re not only my teammates, they\u2019re my brothers,\u201d Medina said. \u201cI\u2019m just really happy that we created a bond during the process. It\u2019s a bond that will go beyond high school sports and into life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI definitely want to thank everyone, especially coach Knepper for giving us his all,\u201d Caden Showaler said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about the winning streaks, it\u2019s about all the great memories.\u201d<\/p>\n Game 1<\/em><\/p>\n Game 1<\/em>Playing host to the opening game of the Class 2A Region 4 Tournament on Friday, Mancos came out on fire and defeated 11-2 Hoehne High School, 70-56 in front of a loud home crowd.<\/p>\n While the Bluejays\u2019 14-point victory was a bit tighter than they might have hoped, a first half that ended with Mancos leading 42-19 set the stage for the lopsided victory.<\/p>\n Caden Showalter, who controlled the paint and showcased a variety of nifty post moves while scoring 18 of his game-high 21 points during the first 16 minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew that one of our advantages going in was that we were going to have a size advantage,\u201d Knepper said. \u201cCaden scored 18 points in the first half. The challenge for us moving forward is to make sure that we keep getting him the ball if he has a good first half.\u201d<\/p>\n Joining Caden Showalter with double-digit scoring was brother Connor Showalter, who scored 17, and Medina and Sehnert, who each scored 10. Sophomore Edgar Hernandez scored six off the bench, and junior Christian Cova and sophomore Connor Sehnert both scored four.<\/p>\n Hoehne was led by junior Nicholas Yates, who scored 12 points, and junior K.J. Rael, who chipped in 10 while playing against the Bluejays\u2019 1-3-1 zone defense, which has given opponents difficulties all year.<\/p>\n \u201c(Hoehne) took a guy off one of the corners and moved him to the top of the key to make the pass a little easier,\u201d Knepper said. \u201cThe biggest problem that we had was that we didn\u2019t rebound very well, and that cost us a lot of points \u2013 in the second half especially.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bluejays also were affected down the stretch by a third-quarter injury to Medina, whose head was split open and bloodied, and Hernandez, who was clubbed in the nose while going to the rim.<\/p>\n Down two key players and playing reserves, the Bluejays were outscored 22-12 in the fourth quarter, which began with Mancos leading 62-41. As Hoehne pulled to 66-54 with 2:28 left, Knepper reinserted his starters.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was unfortunate that we were unable to close that game,\u201d Knepper said. \u201c(Hoehne) started pressing with about five minutes to go, and we were unable to handle it. We also weren\u2019t able to make foul shots down the stretch. It was a good experience for everyone on our team, and a win is a win right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" finishes season 19-4; team falls one win short of state tournament<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[162,28,29,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-75159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-eli-tomac","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75159","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=75159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90251,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75159\/revisions\/90251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75159"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=75159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}