Just because two teams enter the Verde Valley Conference basketball tournaments undefeated Friday, Jan. 28, doesn’t mean they’re going to sweep through the postseason as well.
Clarkdale-Jerome School, which will attempt to win its fourth boys conference tournament championship in a row at home Saturday, Jan. 29, may have to go through second-place Beaver Creek School again after two one-point victories during the regular season.
Clarkdale’s last opponent Tuesday, Jan. 26, is Big Park Community School, which will host the two-day girls tournament Jan. 28 and 29.
Even if the Mingus Rams girls can’t upset Big Park’s undefeated season and win their 12th game against just five losses, Camp Verde Middle School might. The second-place Cowboys only allowed two Coyotes to score in a
Jan. 19 loss that their head coach, Kirk Westervelt, termed “a very physical and intense” 36-30 game.
The two-day boys tournament even has a wild card: Mountain View Preparatory Academy, third in the conference and expected to win its 12th game Jan. 26 over West Sedona School.
Clarkdale-Jerome
With a win Jan. 26 over Big Park, Clarkdale would finish 17-0 and become, head boys coach Rudy Sandoval said, one of the best teams he’s coached.
“To be quite honest, I didn’t expect to win the [regular-] season championship,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure, but we’ll take it.”
Sandoval looks to his front line, Jaron Bowers, Rakeem Honwytewa and Luke Doerksen — “an animal down low,” especially rebounding, Sandoval said — to continue to play tough defense, prevent easy points and box out.
“The rest are the same guys,” he said. “It’s just that two of them didn’t play last year because one had a broken wrist and one was ineligible. Usually, we don’t have big guys like this.”
Seventh-grade guard Tristan Wright “had a good game — luckily” in a 40-39 win Jan. 12 over Beaver Creek, scoring 10 points, eight over his average, to make just enough of a difference.
Wright started Jan. 26 in place of eighth-grader Andrew Naher, normally the team’s best individual defender, who had family commitments that prevented him from playing.
But the Mingus Rams had to play one of their best games of the season Thursday, Jan. 21, to defeat the Ocelots, Sandoval added. Two second-half three-point shots by eighth-grade guard Anthony Lopez helped Clarkdale pull away after two three-pointers by seventh-grader Trey Peters got the lead in the first quarter.
After a beginning to her season head girls coach Lacy Brown said was “frustrating,” seventh-grade post Chayce Doerksen helped the Mingus Rams avenge an early-season loss to the Ocelots and turn a corner Jan. 21 in their fifth straight win, 40-22.
“I felt really good about that,” Brown said. “They’re having fun. Things were coming together and working well. I was very proud. We’ve improved a lot.”
Doerksen scored nine points to support leading scorers Zoey Arwine and Livvy Gordon, who combined for 16. That sort of balance among the eighth-grade guards, distributed to eighth-grader Alyiah Ramirez, should make the Mingus Rams a threat.
Mountain View Prep
Guard Elian Ruiz was the bright spot against the Mingus Rams. The eighth-grader, one of four returning Ocelots starters, is emerging as not just Mountain View Prep’s go-to scorer, but also its leader.
Ruiz is also “one of the hardest workers” on the team, head coach Troy Hoke said.
“Only two members of the team have ever played basketball before middle school,” Hoke said, “and the rest only have one year before this year.
“So getting over the fear of failure and giving it all you can is what they have been doing and finding success. The team this year has been great at playing as a team and building their confidence as basketball players.”
Ruiz scored all but two of his team’s points in just the team’s fifth loss, 34-14, Jan. 21 at Clarkdale.
“You know what, they’re a big team,” Sandoval said. “They play tough inside. They just don’t have the shooters, like Beaver Creek [does], to open that up.”
Hoke’s son, Trevor, Andrew Petersen and Dalton Zingali, the other scorer against the Mingus Rams, will bring their experience to bear in the two-day tournament — and hope the bench can steal a few minutes.
Head girls coach Paul Ventura expects to beat West Sedona School “fairly handily” Jan. 26, like the Ocelots did the first time the two teams played, and enter Big Park as a lower seed at 4-13.
“We had a few close, disappointing losses,” Ventura said, “and then a couple of games we were not close in which were just as disappointing.”
So he is looking more for his young team to just play spoiler and win at least one postseason game — its first in the program’s three-year history.
Despite having only three eighth-graders on his roster, Ventura feels that when his A team plays well, it can beat most of the teams in the conference.
After a 50-7 loss to Big Park on Jan. 5, Ventura also vowed that, if the Ocelots played the Coyotes or Camp Verde in the tournament, they would “give them all we can and try to steal” a win.
Camp Verde
Head girls coach Steve Stone will need to continue to do what pushed Big Park in its closest game of the season
Jan. 19. His gambling press, which can tear 12 points in a row off steals and layups as it did in two games against Mayer Elementary School, will be key to that effort.
Eighth-grader Tanna Decker and seventh-grader Maya Hedges will be key to that effort on the perimeter, while eighth-grader Bennett Holm will need to make opposing defenses guard her down low.
When all of the roster is eligible for head boys coach Donnie Shanks, the Cowboys have enough talent to beat the Mingus Rams, Bobcats and the best of the rest.
Shanks will especially need the guard duo of Jason Collier, at the point, and fellow eighth-grader Joseph Roy to be there to even advance to the tournament’s second day.
He will also need eighth-grader Arron Martinez to bruise for points in the paint, while eighth-graders Manuel Interriano and Jordan Littlefield drive and hit from the wing, along with seventh-grader Ethan Church.
But the Beaver Creek boys, “well-coached,” Sandoval said, under Jeff Clark and Ron Franklin, are the tournament’s truly dangerous team. They scored 12 straight points against Clarkdale with less than three minutes to play to draw within a point on their final possession.
“They had the last shot, both times, to win it — a three-quarter [court] shot,” Sandoval said. “We had a comfortable lead, and we just fell apart. They made a nice comeback on us.”
The Bobcats are small, but quick, which balances out their lack of experience with two seventh-grade big men.
For more information about times and locations of the Verde Valley Conference boys and girls basketball tournaments, please see the Wednesday, Jan. 27, issues of the Camp Verde Journal and Cottonwood Journal Extra.
