Cleveland High splits basketball doubleheader with Mayfield

As they’ve done annually since the 2016-17 basketball season, excluding the 2020 pandemic, the Cleveland High boys’ and girls’ basketball teams do a home-and-home series with two Las Cruces schools.

This season, it meant games with Mayfield Friday in the Thunderdome and games at Centennial in Las Cruces on Saturday.

For the Dec. 22 games, the Storm teams earned a split: The girls lost to the Trojans and their legendary coach, George Maya, but the boys rallied to beat the Trojans in the following game.

Here’s a summary of those contests; look for more in the Dec. 28 edition of the Observer.

Mayfield 60, Cleveland 41: A 12-minute drought between field goals midway through the early game spelled doom for the Storm girls (4-6), who led early but had too many turnovers to stay even with the Trojans (6-1).
CHS coach Susan Kubala’s postgame comment was short and succinct: “You play like you practice, and this is exactly like we practiced for the last month.”
After Cleveland’s Kindyll Sandoval’s 3-pointer tied the game at 18, when Aubrey Jaramillo scored her team’s next bucket, it made the score 41-25.
Mayfield, which lost its only game (to Clovis) at Rio Rancho in the Mel Otero Invite, had a comfortable 48-29 lead heading into the fourth quarter. The Storm could get no closer than 18 the rest of the way.
Savannah Madueno and Jaramillo led the Storm with 10 apiece.
Jazlene Ruiz left MHS with 16 points.
One positive note for the Storm: They were 12 of 14 at the foul line.

Cleveland 70, Mayfield 55: It was the Steverson Show in the nightcap, as senior Daniel erupted for 38 points and his eighth-grade brother, Darius, joined him in double figures with 10, nine coming from 3-pointers.

Trailing 29-28 at intermission, Daniel scored his team’s first 12 points of the second half, with Mayfield (3-6) managing only two points in that 3:33 stretch, giving the Storm (6-1) a 40-31 lead.

Cleveland upped its lead to as many as 16 before the third period ended, with the “Big Bro” scoring 15 of his team’s 25 points in the decisive quarter.

The Trojans battled gamely, but struggled at the foul line, making 6 of 10 there to go with four field goals; the starting quintet amassed only 16 of their points. Nine points is as close as Mayfield could get to the Storm in the final quarter.

First-year CHS coach Zack Cole said the difference in the second-half swing came down to “just being us.

“Playing good, hard defense; it always starts on the defensive side of the ball for us, which allows us to create easy opportunities on offense,” he said.

Indeed, the Trojans had 10 turnovers in the third period after just seven in the first half; the Storm had only 10 turnovers for the entire game.