Mark Showers, athletic director at Camp Verde High School, hopes his girls basketball players’ Feb. 10 exit from its sectional tournament taught the team a lasting lesson about defense.
There will be no more chances this season to get it right after the single-elimination Division III state tournament begins at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 18, with the ninth-seeded Cowboys hosting Chinle High School.
“We just have to play good defense and take care of the basketball,” said Showers, also the Cowboys head girls basketball coach. His team dropped out of its nearly season-long fourth seed and first-round bye in the state playoffs following a 60-53 double-overtime loss to 17th-ranked Sedona Red Rock High School in the Section III tournament semifinals. “I was hoping we’d drop more than that, to 11 or 12.”
In fact, Showers feels the Cowboys are “in a really tough position,” he said, playing the run-and-gun Wildcats, the last Division III school to make the tournament at the No. 24 seed.
A game at eighth-seeded Tuba City High School —“easily one of the top five teams in the state,” with “five to 10 girls who can handle the ball, shoot and get up and down the court quickly” — awaits the winner Saturday, Feb. 21.
“As far as I was concerned, the game with Sedona, it didn’t matter whether we won or lost,” he said. “Neither Sedona nor Camp Verde was going to beat Valley Christian [High School], and the winners of each section get the top six seeds.
“So we play a first-round game at home, which is nice.”
For the full story, please see the Wednesday, Feb. 18, issue of the Camp Verde Journal.
