Behind a barrage of three-pointers, the No. 6-seeded Pueblo girls basketball team defeated No. 11 Yuma Cibola 59-29 on Saturday night in a state tournament game at Amphitheater High.
The Warriors (24-4) advance to the Division III quarterfinals with the win, and will play No. 3 South Mountain at 1:30 p.m. Thursday in Glendale.
Pueblo sophomore guards Alicia Reyes and Ilyssa Galindo led the way with 17 and 15 points, respectively.
Their 32 combined points were more than the entire Cibola team.
After the game Pueblo coach Izzy Galindo said he couldn’t be more proud of the pair of sophomore guards.
“One is my daughter, and the other is her best friend,” Galindo said. “It’s pretty awesome.
“They’ve been playing together since elementary school … so they know where they’re at on the court.”
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The duo was aided by sophomore forward Alba Urena, who contributed eight points as one of the lone post players for the perimeter-orientated Warriors.
Because of their lack of size, the Warriors employed a 2-2-1 full-court press for the majority of the game. Cibola struggled mightily to advance the ball past half-court, and coughed the ball up on numerous occasions as they attempted to do so.
Izzy Galindo said the press is more of a necessity for his Pueblo team due to its lack of size.
“I don’t have height ... so we have to put pressure on the ball and we have to shoot,” Galindo said.
Right from the tip-off, Pueblo used that pressure to force Cibolla into uncomfortable situations, but the Warriors led just 12-7 after the first quarter.
Despite the strong shooting and defense from Pueblo, Cibola hung tough early, though the Warriors increased the lead to 25-11 by halftime.
But at the start of the third quarter, everything went downhill for the Raiders. Pueblo charged out to a 23-point lead behind a 13-4 run out of the gates, with most of the points coming off turnovers caused by the press.
Reyes said the team goes over the press every day in practice, so it can be effective come game time.
“Usually our press does work because, most of the time, girls can’t handle the pressure and they try to dribble through it,” Reyes said.
Cibola entered the game as a relative unknown for the Pueblo coaching staff, and Izzy Galindo said he took to the Internet for most of his information.
Despite his lack of information on the Raiders, he said he wasn’t too worried about his opponents based on what he found out about the team.
“I didn’t really know much about Cibola, but I kind of did some research online with MaxPreps,” he said.
“I wasn’t too worried about them with the way we play and from what I heard from the way they play.”
