Navajo Prep 63 Robertson 47

ALBUQUERQUE — The fuse has been lit.

Consider Friday’s 63-47 loss to Navajo Prep in the girls’ Class 3A state championship game was an appetizer for what’s to come in the next year. And the year after that. And while you’re at it, the two years after that.

Devoid of a senior on its active roster, the Robertson girls basketball team showed its potential by reaching this year’s finals despite having the youngest, least-experienced team in the postseason. Five eighth graders dot a roster that includes one freshman, three sophomores and four juniors.

As much as that raw, unsculpted talent paid dividends every step of the way before Friday’s lunch hour tipoff, it took a brief hiatus the moment the Cardinals came down the fabled Pit ramp to face the defending state champs.

Robertson ended its first five possessions with turnovers, shot an airball on its sixth trip down the floor and turned it over two more times before Jayden Jenkins finally scored the team’s first points on a low-post layup four minutes into the game. By then, Navajo Prep had built

an 11-2 lead that, aside from the 21 seconds it took for the Eagles to answer Jenkins’ bucket with a 3-pointer from Aiona Johnson to make it 14-2, never dipped below double digits the rest of the way.

“They were a little excited, nervous,” said Jenkins. “It’s a lot, all the fans and just the pressure. I think they’re just a little on edge.”

It’s one thing for a veteran team to run down The Pit ramp into the bright lights and play on the state’s most famous chunk of sports real estate with a season on the line. It’s another thing altogether when your starting lineup has a pair of eighth graders and all but one player on the roster had never stepped foot inside The Pit unless it was for a Lobos game.

“For a young kid to come down the ramp and get out there and then to play against a pretty dang good team, it’s a lot to ask from them,” said Robertson coach Jose “Majic” Medina, a Robertson grad who led the Cardinals to the state title in 2019 featuring a team that had Jenkins on the bench as a seldom-used freshman backup.

Down 18-2 six minutes into the game, Robertson turned it over nine times in the first quarter, missing 10 of 12 shots while giving up four 3-pointers in the first five minutes.

“We threw the playbook out the window,” Medina said. “It all had to come down to hustle, heart and guts and just try and make things happen. Try and make it a chaotic game and hopefully we get some easy shots, some steals.”

Medina used the timeout between the first and second quarters to calm his team down and somehow ignite the offense through the chaos he spoke of. The Cardinals cut their deficit to 13 at one point, then trimmed a 22-point second-half hole to 12 in the fourth quarter.

Every time it seemed like it might become interesting, the Eagles hit a bucket, forced a turnover or got to the freethrow line.

“We would work hard to cut it back to 12, 13 and then they’d go back up 17 or 18 again,” Medina said. “I tried to tell the girls they’re too good of a team.”

Toss out the first quarter that saw Navajo Prep (14-0) open a 23-6 lead and the final three quarters saw Robertson outscore the Eagles 41-40. The difference, both coaches said, was Prep shredding the Cardinals’ zone defense in the early going.

“Not a lot of teams can stay [in] a zone on us because we’re just so deadly from the outside,” said Navajo Prep coach Rainy Crisp.

As poorly as thing started, the finally tally wasn’t half bad for the Cardinals (10-5). Seeded sixth in the eight-team 3A tournament, they went on the road for a firstround win, won a semifinal game at a neutral site, then settled into a decent shooting night in which Jenkins finished with 23 points and seven rebounds.

The Cardinals did finish with 25 turnovers but held their own once things settled down. Eighth grader Alexis Pacheco had six points on 1-for-12 shooting, but she drew eight fouls from Navajo Prep’s swarming defense and converted all four of her freethrow attempts.

After the final buzzer, there were few tears, no tantrums and zero regrets. The Cardinals stuck around long enough to congratulate the Navajo Prep players and take one last look around The Pit.

When the got back to the locker room, Medina’s message was clear: This was just the start, the template for what lies ahead is in place and ready to be tried again next year.