<\/p>\n
The summit of the 2A San Juan Basin League had been an elusive goal for Montezuma County\u2019s two 2A District 3 representatives.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, a strong semifinal victory over Telluride propelled regular season co-champions and tournament top seed Mancos into Sunday\u2019s title game. Then, a couple hours later, Dolores captured a heart-stopping overtime victory over perennial league power Ignacio, ensuring the trophy would find new owners at the end of a weather-delayed San Juan Basin League Tournament.<\/p>\n
When the dust cleared, Mancos (15-6) topped rival Dolores (11-10) for the third time this season, posting a 47-36 victory to win the 2A San Juan Basin League tournament.<\/p>\n
The Bluejays had controlled the majority of their two regular season meetings, staving off a Dolores comeback in their first meeting before dominating the Bears in a 27-point win in early February.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t take long for the Bluejays to find their rhythm against the Bears, running out to a 9-3 lead on the strength of six early points from junior Caden Showalter.<\/p>\n
Dolores stayed in the game early on the back of their 3-point shooting, accounting for all nine of their first quarter points, but still trailed 16-9 after eight minutes.<\/p>\n
The Showalter display continued into the second quarter, with younger brother Connor burying a jumper to give Mancos their largest lead of the game, 20-9.<\/p>\n
Dolores, who had already assured themselves a place in the 2A Regional tournament courtesy of their semifinal victory, tried to battle back midway through the second stanza. Bears sophomore Hayden Tallmadge scored a pair of layups to close the gap to 22-16.<\/p>\n
Mancos briefly restored its double-digit lead on a Caden Showalter bucket, while Dolores turned to the free throw line to stay in contact. The Bluejays settled for a 29-20 lead heading into the intermission.<\/p>\n
Out of the halftime break, Dolores seniors Dakota Smith and Neil Farias dropped in 3-pointers to begin the third quarter, and the Bears were the closest they had been since the opening minutes, down 31-26. However, much like they have all season, the Mancos Bluejays calmly responded with a spurt of their own, with senior Hunter Hoover\u2019s layup putting the top seed back up by nine.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, with the game slowing down and scoring at a premium, the Bluejays turned to their defense to dim any hope of a Bear comeback. Dolores was limited to five second-half field goals, two from senior Tristen Swagerty. Mancos sophomore Christian Cova helped to settle matters with late free throws.<\/p>\n
For Mancos head coach Elijah Knepper, claiming the district title was testament to his team\u2019s cohesion this season. \u201cThis is a special group,\u201d said Knepper. \u201cI couldn\u2019t be more proud of these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bears struggled to find an answer for Caden Showalter, who led all scorers with 26 points. Connor Showalter added 10, and Cova posted eight points in the winning effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew it was going to be tough to slow Swagerty down,\u201d said Knepper. \u201cWe just tried to make him work for everything that he earned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tristen Swagerty paced the Bears with 11 points, while William Swagerty scored six points.<\/p>\n
With the district title in hand, Mancos prepares to host a regional site in the 2A tournament. Dolores, along with third-place finisher Telluride, also will fill in the field of 32, with sites and game times to be determined when the state bracket is released early this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been a buzz around the community about this team all year,\u201d said Knepper. \u201cAnd we\u2019re blessed to have their support going into the regional tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Showalter puts on scoring display in championship game<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[38,37,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-95469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-dolores-high-school","tag-mancos-high-school","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95469","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=95469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95469"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=95469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}