By Glen Rosales
Special to the SUN

ALBUQUERQUE – To say Española Valley faced an uphill challenge in Friday’s opening round of the Class 4A girls state basketball tournament would not be hyperbole.

With nearly an entire roster of towering players, third-seeded Albuquerque Academy presented the type of challenge the No. 14 Lady Sundevils rarely faced during the season.

And the challenge was simply too tall for Española to overcome as they were outscored 33-3 in the first half and eventually lost, 48-20.

“They were a lot bigger than what we’re used to playing man for man,” Española coach Ray Romero said. “Then we started shooting a little quick. They got a lead, and we start well, we thought we better start shooting quicker. We shouldn’t get that, but that’s the way it goes. They’re a good team, they’re tall, they’re strong.”

And the Lady Sundevils probably never should have been playing Academy, at least not in this round. Española was originally slotted as an 11th seed and set to face No. 6 Bernalillo, which would have been a much better match up.

Instead, a seeding error by New Mexico Activities Association officials led to a rare reshuffling of the brackets, dropping Española to 14th and a meeting with the Academy behemoths, led by national recruit Harper Dunn, a 6’6” post who transferred to the Lady Chargers from Corona before the school year. She towered nearly a foot above the tallest Lady Sundevils player.

Throw in several other 6-footers on the starting Academy lineup and it was painfully obvious that Española was going to have issues.

“I feel like when we saw who we matched up with in the beginning, we were really confident,” senior point guard Leah Vigil, who finished with four points, said. “And then once we saw that it changed, yeah, I feel like, honestly, we knew who was on their team, their height, and the match-up we’d have was gonna be rough. But we just had to make the best out of it. Just do what we normally do, yeah, shoot, play as a team together, but it’s just hard.”

And the Lady Sundevils actually started out good on their first possession, moving the ball around the perimeter for about 90 seconds before a lane to the basket opened up. A little hesitation in shooting ruined the sequence and then the Lady Chargers were off, quickly scoring six points before Kaydence Arrey finally got Española on the board three minutes into the game – but it was the Lady Sundevils only bucket of the first half.

“We got a wide open shot, but she didn’t know to shoot it or not, and then she didn’t shoot it, and yeah, but we did what we wanted,” Romero said of the first possession. “We brought it out; we tried to get the big girl to come out. And we did. We held the ball when she came out. We knew we could drive. And we did for a perfect possession.”

And when it didn’t work, the young Lady Sundevils seemed to get a bit flustered.

“I know the score at halftime, but we came back in the second half,” Romero said. “We tried, made some little runs and we never gave up. We told them 32 minutes, play hard. I told them, if you miss, is anybody gonna die at halftime? And they said, ‘No.’ I said, okay, because you know what I mean. They got a little nervous. But I said just shoot it. If you miss, you miss. And now every time we had a huddle, I’d say, have fun because they need to have fun, you know what I mean? So they’ve got to enjoy the game. So that’s why I told them.”

Besides the height disadvantage, the big issue for Española boiled down to simply making baskets. The Lady Sundevils struggled to hit shots they usually make, going 1 for 20 in the first half. Averi Schultz finished with five points to lead Española in scoring.

“We missed a lot of shots,” Romero said. “We got our looks. So we told the girls at halftime, you’re getting your looks. Focus a little bit more, because we’re getting shots. They got 27 shots. We got 21 shots, but they made 14. We made one and we had some open shots that we could have made. We just, I think that moment was a little big for us.”