Pecos 61 Lordsburg 55

The Lordsburg Mavericks had the Pecos Lady Panthers right where they wanted them Friday night.

That might seem hard to fathom considering they had committed 43 turnovers with 4 minutes left in the Class 2A girls basketball championship, but it was true.

Pecos senior guard Trinity Herrera, the captain for the Lady Panthers, stewed quietly and impatiently on the bench with four fouls, watching the Mavericks build a 52-47 lead despite struggling to handle Pecos’ end-to-end pressure.

It wasn’t until the 3:46 mark of the final quarter that Pecos head coach Bryan Gonzales signaled his star player to the scorers table, much to the surprise of many because it appeared he waited too long to pull the trigger.

But Gonzales had a plan, and he wasn’t about to deviate from it.

“I felt like I needed to bring her in at a certain time because I knew she was going to work and I know what she can do,” Gonzales said.

What Herrera did was lead a finishing 14-3 run fueled by eight turnovers and her eight points for a 61-55 win and the program’s second state title in the past three years.

In a matchup between the active hands of the Lady Panthers (14-0) and Lordsburg senior forward Madison Miller’s one-woman show, pressure outlasted size. But just barely.

Miller did everything she could to carry the Mavericks (12-2) to the finish line, scoring 29 points, grabbing 18 rebounds and blocking eight shots. She even served as an outlet at midcourt against the Lady Panthers’ press.

Gonzales couldn’t believe the outcome hung in the balance despite a stellar defensive effort.

“We talked about that at halftime,” he said. “We had created 28 turnovers [by that point], and I said we needed to capitalize on that.”

Pecos collected 34 steals and forced 51 turnovers,

but found itself in a dogfight with 27 seconds left as Lordsburg trailed by only 58-55 with Mavericks guard Alicia Jacquez at the freethrow line.

Jacquez, though, missed both attempts to cut into the margin, and it proved to be the last salvo Lordsburg had.

“We knew it was going to be tough with the turnovers,” Mavericks head coach Rodney Plowman said. “We knew they played a lot of pressure. Sometimes we handled it well, and then we went south. We needed a little more consistency getting the ball across [the midcourt].”

Lordsburg’s defensive effort almost muted that deficiency, and it was anchored by Miller. If she wasn’t blocking shots, she was altering most of them as the Lady Panthers lacked the will to attack the basket when Miller was under it — except for Herrera.

She finished with 25 points, and got to the charity stripe 16 times, making 13. The rest of the team, however, was a combined 12 for 47 from the field as Pecos shot 28.6 percent overall (18 for 63).

“We had planned to work around it, because we knew she was going to be a hard player,” Herrera said.

The Lady Panthers also turned the ball over 22 times, and some of those turnovers offset their own steals, but Lordsburg also seemed to turn the ball over the right way.

A careless pass that went out of bounds or a traveling violation allowed the Mavericks the chance to get downcourt to set up their defense. Plowman credited Jacquez’s ability to transition back on defense quickly enough to slow down the Lady Panthers. That helped keep the Mavericks in the game when others would have crumbled in the face of such relentless defensive intensity.

“That little girl is probably one of the fastest girls there is,” Plowman said. “She is everywhere. Sometimes she is too fast for her own good. But she is the one who gets back most of the time and gets into the play and messes it up.”

Still, it appeared all of that would be for naught when Pecos’ pressure fueled a 12-1 spurt in the third quarter that turned a 33-30 Mavericks lead into a 42-34 Lady Panthers advantage on Savnnah Ortiz’s three-point play at the 3:29 mark.

However, the seeds of the Mavericks’ comeback were sewn 15 seconds earlier, when Herrera committed her fourth foul and was sent her to the bench. What followed was a 10-2 response by Lordsburg that tied the score at 44-all on Angie Aguilar’s layup 18 seconds into the final quarter.

Pecos went ice cold from the field during that stretch, missing 15 of 16 shots that appeared to spell doom.

Gonzales, though, never panicked at executing his plan, even as the Mavericks — or more precisely Miller — went on a 6-1 spurt to take a 52-47 lead on a layup off a Jacquez driving dish with 3:46 left that led Gonzales to call a timeout.

It took Herrera 34 seconds to make her impact felt, with a pair of free throws to trim the margin to 52-49 with 2:52 left.

The Lady Panthers collected four steals on the next five Lordsburg possessions. When Ortiz was fouled on her steal with 1:50 left, her two free throws gave Pecos a 54-53 lead that was threatened, but never relinquished. The Lady Panthers hit seven of 10 free throws in that final stretch.

Lordsburg could only counter with a Miller bucket off the glass at 1:28 to get within 56-55.

Herrera came up with the decisive play when she deflected Emma Mendoza’s pass at midcourt and raced the other way for a layup. However, Jacquez swooped in to push Herrera as she shot, and was called for an intentional foul to give Herrera two free throws and Pecos possession of the ball.

She drained both fre throws for 58-55 with 43.5 seconds left.

And all that was left to do was celebrate. For Herrera and fellow teammate Alexis Gonzales, they played key roles in both championships runs, and they expressed joy at finishing their high school careers with a blue trophy — one they didn’t think would happen amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ve been working since we were little,” Herrera said. “It just feels good to end on a good note.”