Heading into the Thursday, Dec. 17, chapter of their cross-valley rivalry with Sedona Red Rock High School, the varsity basketball teams at Camp Verde High School have been consistent at being inconsistent.
Only a Dec. 9 win at Glendale Preparatory Academy separates the boys [5-5] from the girls [4-6], as both teams continue to hover around .500 records after splitting their respective home and road matchups Friday and Saturday, Dec. 11 and 12.
Following a pair of blowout victories at CVHS over Anthem Prep on Dec. 11, the Cowboys couldn’t maintain that level of play 22 hours later against River Valley High School, dropping both boys and girls games to the Dust Devils.
Boys Basketball
The 61-54 loss was particularly disappointing to fourth-year head coach Dan Wall, whose boys had scored 53 points the first half alone on their way to a season-high 81 and a 36-point win over the Eagles the night before.
“Better opponent,” Wall summed up River Valley after the loss Dec. 12. “[We] gave up more than 20 points on second-chance shots.”
Scoring and rebounding weren’t the only statistics to nose-dive from Anthem Prep. It was an off night shooting for the Cowboys as well, as leading scorer Javier Perez and fellow senior Jaysen Leonard combined for 37 points in the loss after Perez scored 31 by himself in the first half against the Eagles.
“Honestly, he should’ve had more than that,” Wall said. “He didn’t finish particularly well.”
Still, if Perez had made three missed free throws, he would have outscored the entire Eagles team in the first half. Many of those points were created from turnovers committed against the Cowboys’ full-court press, particularly in a second quarter in which CVHS doubled up Anthem, 30-15.
“I told the guys at half, I wasn’t very pleased with it up until about the last two minutes,” Wall said. “Our effort was very low defensively.
“It’s a bit of a gamble; it just looked awful. We need to do a better job keeping guys in front of us. We had been doing better creating opportunities this year in transition.”
The Cowboys capitalized on enough opportunities to put eight other players in the scorebook, as Perez’s senior backcourt counterpart, Thomas Herrera, added 11 and Leonard and junior guard Aaron Tracy each contributed 10 points to help spark a 13-0 third-quarter run that put the Eagles away, 70-35.
“That 13-0 run started on the defensive end of the floor,” Wall said. “That’s what I’m looking for. That’s when we’re at our best.
“They came out and responded really well the first two or three minutes of the third quarter, from a defensive standpoint. That left a better taste in my mouth.”
Following the Dec. 12 loss in Mohave Valley, though, Wall hopes his players have learned that the rest of the schedule will demand 32 minutes of defense, on every possession.
Girls Basketball
Longtime head coach and CVHS athletic director Mark Showers has had to be patient with this winter’s girls varsity, as it is still missing several key components — including two varsity returners from last season at forward who are out with knee injuries until the end of the year.
In fact, while Kayla Hackett is projected to return Tuesday, Dec. 29, for the Yvonne Johnson Memorial Invitational, fellow junior forward Courtney Yazzie is still out, and senior leader Dusty Dowdle won’t be back until the section opener, a Saturday, Jan. 8, rematch at home with Sedona Red Rock High School.
“I have to deal with the pain,” Dowdle said. “I’ve been dealing with this since I was a freshman. But I don’t care what they say, I’ll be back by section.”
Either of them could have made the difference in a 40-38 home loss Dec. 12 to River Valley. Senior guard Gabby Ontiveros, who had just two field goals in a 51-33 defeat of Anthem Prep the night before, led the way with 15 points.
In those forwards’ absence, senior post Allee Drake has “had to do it all,” Showers said — and she did Dec. 11, scoring 24 points.
“I kind of have to step up,” she said. “Coach told us to concentrate, so I had to focus to get it done. We can’t get injured anymore.”
At the beginning of the season, Showers anticipated she might split some time with Dowdle, but the 5-foot, 8-inch Drake has had to play all four quarters in the paint, along with junior Marisa Presmyk, who also had a couple of putback buckets against Anthem.
While one junior guard, Katrina Esparza, cannot risk contact while recovering from jaw surgery, another, former Mingus Union High School player Nieja Garner, contributed 10 points in her first game back after missing every game since the Nov. 24 season-opening win at Mayer High School.
Several of her points came out of a press defense Showers has had to go to in order to find ways to score with so many players injured, he said.
“We’re spending more time on it trying to disrupt the other team,” he said. “It’s slow — I’ve had to go zone more because they’re just not as well-versed.”
But it was a freshman, Gabby Ontiveros’ sister, Hope, who stepped into the starting lineup and drained her second three-pointer to give CVHS a 10-point lead with a minute to play in the third quarter.
She and Katrina Poelstra were two freshmen who helped put the game away for the Cowboys at that point with “really nice” efforts, Showers said.
“Until [Dec. 11], we were down five kids out of 12,” he said. “We’ve started out kind of in a hole, and we’re going to have to try and claw our way back out.”
For full boys and girls results from the Desert Classic basketball tournament, please see the Wednesday, Dec. 16, issue of the Camp Verde Journal.
