GARY'S GLIMPSES: I miss the pit

This just didn’t seem right: Neither Cleveland nor Rio Rancho high schools had a basketball team that played in The Pit last month.

It puts a crimp on my final high school hoops season, because as I count it up, in my 24 years here at the Observer, I have been to The Pit to see the local teams play there in 2000, 2003-09, 2011-12, 2014-19, 2021 and 2023.

That’s a great percentage, I realize, and although the Cleveland High boys team accounts for the bulk of those adventures there, I cannot count the 2001 postseason, when the tournament was held in the Pan American Center in Las Cruces, and where the RRHS girls were the last team to win a third-place game at state, nor 2020, when I actually went to a game in The Pit and was ejected by the NMAA because of the pandemic, with no media members allowed in.

In my earliest stint as a media guy, I was at the 1980 girls state tournament, played in Greyhound Arena on the Eastern New Mexico University campus, where I did play-by-play on KARS-AM for the AAA title tilt between the Kirtland Central girls and Los Lunas.

The next time one of “my teams” — then, from either Belen or Los Lunas — made it to a championship was in 1985, when the Belen Eagles were defeated by St. Pius.

I also covered many games as a freelancer for the Albuquerque Journal and recall doing some radio work when Albuquerque Academy’s boys were perennial champs, coached by Mike Brown with sons Danny and Greg playing for him.

In my early days at the Observer, coach Bobby Mac’s Rams girls were there in 2000, two months before I started here, and again from 2003-06, then again in 2008 and ’09 — but the Rams girls have been there just once since, in 2019, for one game — a 55-42 loss to Hobbs in a quarterfinal. Of course, for years the NMAA contested the girls’ quarters and semis at the Santa Ana Star Center, now the Rio Rancho Events Center.

The Ram boys, of course, made a memorable run to win the blue trophy in March 2007 under coach Brian Smith, who got them there in their first trip in 2006 and then again in ’07 and ’08.

Smith then headed across Northern Boulevard to start the program at Cleveland, where it took a few seasons before the Storm’s inaugural appearance at The Pit in 2011. They became regulars, under Smith and then Sean Jimenez, who succeeded him and brought home the blue trophy in 2021.

The RRHS boys had a storybook postseason run in 2016, when they were the 11 seed, beat the Storm in a semifinal contest and won the blue trophy.

The Cleveland girls have been in the postseason and beyond the first round just twice, and each time (2011 and ’12) their brief run ended in the Star Center. The Storm girls have never played a game in The Pit.

I went to The Pit anyway, found a great story there in the form of Brennan “Bri” Rode, a former Rams star and lately the successful coach of the St. Pius X girls team.

I was determined to soak in some of the excitement, watch some quality hoops and maybe see some old friends and coaches in what possibly could be my final time covering the state tournament there.

I’m not a Lobos basketball fan anymore; my best memories of University of New Mexico hoops are from the Gary Colson and Dave Bliss eras.

My most recent non-high school trips there were to see Bobby Knight coach Texas Tech and to see Jimmer Fredette play for BYU, which was more than a decade ago.

That said, why did I get chosen to write “50 years at The Pit” a few years ago?

I’ll probably get to The Pit again. After all, it’s been more than a basketball venue for me: I’ve seen tennis, bull riding, concerts, boxing and the 1999 high school graduation of my son in there.

But, deep down, I missed the lack of Storm and Rams teams playing there in my last hurrah.