The Camp Verde High School boys basketball team made a breakthrough on the first day of the Yvonne Johnson Memorial Tournament.
It pulled off a two-game winning streak for the first time all season.
The Cowboys came away 54-43 winners over Seligman High School in its opener before edging Williams High School, 50-47, to advance first in their bracket.
“Anytime you’re in a close game and you find ways to make plays down the stretch that’s a huge confidence builder for the kids,” Cowboys head coach Dan Wall said. “I saw a spark in the locker room tonight and that was fun.”
In their first game, the Cowboys led by as many as 17 points in the second quarter, relying on a high-pressure defense to create turnovers, which in turn led to more offensive opportunities.
The only problem was, and has been throughout the season, that Camp Verde struggled shooting from the field.
It shot 13-for-39 from short distance and two-for-11 from range in its matchup with the Antelopes.
The Cowboys also forced the issue more often than not, creating rushed shots.
“A lot of that comes with experience,” Wall said. “Just getting a game sense of when to attack and when to settle ourselves down and run some offense, I think that’s really what we’re trying to get into their heads.”
Against a Seligman team with only two substitutes on its bench, the Cowboys took advantage to dominate the boards, severely limiting the Antelopes second chance opportunities.
By halftime Camp Verde led 32-17, but allowed Seligman to get as close as 45-35 in the final frame.
It was a balanced scoring effort from the Cowboys, with senior forward Reyes Herrera and freshman guard Abe Gonzalez leading with 11 points each while senior guard Aaron Tracy and senior forward Drake Smith poured in 10 each.
In their second game of the day, the Cowboys led 13-10 after the first quarter behind six points from Smith.
However they got into foul trouble from the start, with Gonzalez, a starter, finding himself on the bench with two fouls in the first quarter. And those fouls would continue to haunt Camp Verde.
At the start of the fourth quarter, the Cowboys regained the lead for the first time since the early part of the third.
But with Williams in the bonus, the two teams exchanged the lead three times, and Camp Verde could never stretch out a sizeable lead.
“Just stay low and stop reaching with our hands and move our feet more,” Herrera said.
A three-pointer from Herrera with 3:13 remaining gave it the definitive lead, and two missed free throws by the Vikings proved to be costly.
Unlike the first game, the Cowboys exhibited more patience on the offensive end, avoiding short possessions, especially after forcing turnovers.
“Better shot selection, we didn’t take as much threes as we usually do, we mainly scored an awful lot from the paint,” Herrera said.
The ball was kept out of their opponents’ hands not by strong rebounding, but this time from consistently forcing turnovers. Nonetheless Camp Verde was unable to capitalize on the majority of those chances.
“We missed 13 shots from about three feet, so I was very happy with the looks we were getting overall, we just struggled to finish,” Wall said.
Williams lost its shooting touch as the game went on as well, going from a seven-for-11 clip in the first half to three-for-13 in the second.
Tracy scored a team-high 22 points en route to the victory.
Camp Verde played Round Valley High School in its first game Friday, but remaining tournament results were unavailable at press time.
