Clayton overcomes Escalante's pressure 48-47 for title

Mar. 13—ALBUQUERQUE — Morgan Crisp wasn't ready for it.

Emerson Beiland wasn't ready for it, either.

Only Clyde Sanchez and his

33 years of basketball coaching experience in Northern New Mexico — 11 of them as a head coach — was ready for what the Escalante Lady Lobos were dishing out Saturday night.

Sanchez, the first-year head coach of the Clayton Lady Yellowjackets, is a 1982 Pecos graduate and had coaching stops at his alma mater, West Las Vegas, Santa Fe Prep and Coronado, among others, to indoctrinate him to Northern New Mexico basketball.

So when the top-seeded Lady Lobos showed up at The Pit for the Class 2A championship game, Sanchez had his team ready — even if they weren't.

"We did work a lot on press-breaking," Sanchez said.

It showed in the final moments, as Clayton maintained poise to handle a wild 31-second finish to hold off Escalante, 48-47, when Beiland hit a runner in the lane with 5 seconds left.

The Lady Yellowjackets (22-5) saw a 46-43 lead disappear in the span of

15 seconds as Escalante turned two steals into four straight points, capped by Brycelyn Martinez's steal of a Beiland pass under the Lady Lobos' basket and bank shot with 15 seconds left for a 47-46 lead.

But Beiland turned around and became a one-woman press-breaker, bouncing off of Escalante post Cipriana Garcia, raced past Martinez and hit a runner over Kalese Torrez with

5 seconds left.

Garcia took the inbounds pass and tried to race into the paint for a final shot, but got it off after the buzzer sounded.

Shock first hit Beiland, then she started to celebrate and was taken to the ground by teammate Akira Herrera, who was Beiland's wing woman in erasing a 21-8 second-quarter deficit.

Beiland, who scored 12 points in the game, admitted she was not prepared to handle Escalante's "32 minutes of hell" style that puts ceaseless pressure on opponents in the hopes of forcing turnovers that lead to easy transition buckets. "It's really hard to keep your team at their own pace while trying to build momentum on the offensive side," Beiland said. "It's really difficult, but I'm really glad our team was able to pull it off."

Beiland and Herrera combined to score 19 of the Lady Yellowjackets' 34 points in the second half. At one point, they combined for 11 straight points that gave Clayton a 41-35 lead with 4:04 left.

The comeback was a fusion of an offense that committed just six turnovers through the first 12 minutes with a defense that forced the Lady Lobos (23-5) into a 4-for-19 shooting performance.

Sanchez said one thing he learned from his coaching experience is that pressing teams do not like to be pressed. So, when the Lady Yellowjackets went to a full-court man-to-man press, it threw the Lady Lobos off just enough.

"I've always said if you're a pressing team and you get pressed, you don't like it," Sanchez said. "You like to do it to others, but it throws you off."

Escalante head coach Stanford Salazar said opposing teams had turned to the habit of trying to slow games down to mute the effective of his team's pressing style. Clayton was effective at doing just that for much of the game.

"We were always trying to keep the tempo up for us," Salazar said. "Right there at the end, I don't think we pushed the ball enough."

That was clearly the case in the first half, as the Lady Lobos jumped all over Clayton after it took a 3-2 lead early, using a 19-5 run to build a 21-8 lead on Journey Trejo' 3-pointer with 4:18 left before halftime.

The Lady Yellowjackets had eight turnovers by that point but settled down during a 6-0 run that was a preview of what was to come in the second half, even though Torrez scored a pair of buckets in the final 50 seconds to make it 25-14 at the break.

From there, Clayton tightened up its ball-handling and defense and slowly took the game to the Lady Lobos. But it was a season of preparation that truly got the Lady Yellowjackets ready for the moment.

"I knew what was coming and I kept my eyes open," Sanchez said with a grin.

In truth, he was keeping his eyes open for his Lady Yellowjackets.