Saturday, November 29, 2008

Short-handed Eagles fall on road in season opener vs. Del Norte

Jaramillo has 21 in loss at Del Norte

John Gale News-Bulletin Staff Writer; jgale@news-bulletin.com

Albuquerque The Belen boys basketball team started its season without some of its best players, and the depleted Eagles (0-1) lost their season opener 59-49 at Del Norte (1-1) on Tuesday.

"Considering we're waiting for football (players), we've played pretty well," Belen coach Chris Tapia said. "But we had a lot of defensive breakdowns, and it came back to bite us."

Belen is waiting for the conclusion of the football season to get starting point guard Josh Maddox, starting guard/forward Lawrence Armijo and role players Jayson Gurule and Orlando Castillo back. The Eagle football team plays Saturday in the Class 4A state semifinals, a success BHS hadn't enjoyed in Tapia's first four years as the Eagle coach.

"It hurt a lot (not to have the football players) just because of experience," Tapia said. "I only had seven men in my rotation, which is very short. We were playing some guys playing their first varsity game: Brandon Santiago, Dante Berry and Kyle Ntiforo."

Del Norte guard McKinley Henry was virtually unstoppable all game long, as he poured in 27 points to lead the Knights.

"He broke us down on backdoor cuts," Tapia said. "And he's a good shooter from the outside, and he had some good looks. We lost sight of him at times."

Doing most of the damage for Belen was shooting guard Brian Jaramillo, who had 21 points, including three 3-pointers. Small forward Daniel Hessinger added 13 points and a pair of treys.

"With the football guys out, Brian had to step up and be a team leader for us," Tapia said. "He did a great job. He put points on the board. Daniel started off a little slow offensively and picked it up in the fourth quarter."

Henry wasted no time, getting a layup and a 3-pointer from the left corner to put the Knights up 5-0.

Jaramillo answered with a triple of his own, but Henry scored six more points, and guard Anellus Holland scored twice--including a beautiful driving layup that went high off the glass--to give Del Norte a 20-12 lead at the end of the first quarter.

Neither team scored much in the second quarter, though Henry and Jaramillo each had four points, as the Knights extended their lead to 31-20 at halftime.

The Eagles began to mount a comeback early in the third quarter, as they started the second half on a 15-7 run. Jaramillo had seven points in the run that cut Del Norte's lead to 38-35, but that was as close as Belen would get the rest of the way.

The Eagles got a stop defensively, but a traveling violation gave the ball back to the Knights, who promptly scored four points on two layups to stretch the lead back to seven going into the fourth quarter.

Belen briefly got the lead back down to four after Hessinger's back-to-back 3-pointers made it 45-41, but Knight guard Josh Rahimi took over with a put-back, a 3-pointer and a reverse layup to put Del Norte up 55-43 with just a couple of minutes to go. The Knights then made their free throws down the stretch to close out the Eagles.

Belen played Moriarty in the first round of the Bernalillo Tournament on Friday after News-Bulletin press time and will be in action again on Saturday against either Bernalillo or Santa Fe Indian School.

E-mail this story Printer-friendly version