Rams girls lose to Clovis in Otero Invite’s third-place game

RIO RANCHO – Second-year Rio Rancho High School girls’ basketball coach Lori Mabrey wasn’t ready to proclaim this year’s edition of the Rams (7-2) will get deep into the postseason in March, but after the team won its seventh game in a row Dec. 14, a romp over Centennial in the first round of the annual Mel Otero Invitational at RRHS, she was anticipating her team’s first real test.

By Saturday afternoon, she had some answers, after the rams placed third in the annual event at RRHS.

It was the Rams’ best start since 13-0 to start the 2008-09 season, which ended in the semis with a loss to La Cueva. The Rams, under Bobby Mac, also got as far as the semis in 2001, ’02, ’05 and ’08.

Scott Peterson got the Rams into the semis in 2008, when the sixth-seeded Rams lost to Hobbs; a year earlier, Hobbs ended the Rams’ hopes in the quarterfinals.

Of course, Hobbs ends a lot of teams’ seasons – including the Rams’ last season, in a first-round meeting at Tasker Arena.

“It needs work; we need to make layups,” Mabrey said after the Rams’ rout. “We missed plenty of those. We still turn it over way too much (unofficially 15 turnovers for RRHS, 31 for the Hawks).”

Any predictions will have to wait. That first loss is in the books, and so is the second.

“We’re about to find out if we really have us a basketball team,” she said. “I think our kids are excited about an opportunity to play them. I’m not 100 percent we’re ready for them, but here we go. We kind of set up our tournament so we could face them early; I want our kids to be able to compete with that top-tier level group of kids.

“I just told our kids I do expect a lot out of them, and I know that I’m tough on them –I’m the tough old lady, but that’s why we’re firing pretty much on all cylinders, because we don’t back off on (our opponents.)

Clovis 58, Rams 52: The Wildcats opened the game on a 13-2 run and led by as many as 11 in the first half, which ended with CHS ahead, 32-25.

The Rams’ run began as the third period started, with a 9-1 run to open the second half giving them the lead for the first time, 34-33.

It turned out to be their only lead on Saturday in the consolation contest; the ’Cats scored the next six points and closed out the quarter on a 16-4 run, which became 18-4 in the opening seconds of the fourth quarter.

The Rams soon used a 6-0 run of their own to trim the deficit to 51-44, and got as close as four points late, given a chance as Clovis players made only one of eight free throws in the final eight minutes.

Zarai Lewis, another of the state’s top cagers, led the Wildcats with 25 points; Kailyn Jefferson added 12. Lewis and Jefferson were named to the all-tourney team.

Clovis lost to Eldorado, 63-51, in Friday’s other semifinal game; Lewis had 24 in that one.

Eighth-grader Madi Martinez, one of three sisters on the Rams roster, came off the bench to score 24 points; the Rams’ starting five managed 26 points.

RRHS, attempting only four 3-pointers on Friday, became a victim of the time-honored saying, “Win by the 3, die by the 3” Saturday.

It was bombs away for the Rams, who made 4 of 6 in one first-half stretch, then managed to miss 14 in a row before Lilly Martinez, Madi’s older sister, ended the drought. Clovis made only three 3s in the game.

The Rams also had fewer turnovers, 15 to 17, so there some good things for Mabrey to talk to her team about.

“I think our guard play is a little more advanced than our post play at this point of the season,” she said, referring to the guards attempting more shots from behind the arc. “We do have good size and we’re going to continue to work on our post play.

“I do think that we have a difficult time when and where to get them the ball, and sometimes we get it to them too late,” she added, “which doesn’t exactly help their game out … just little things that we have to work on and get better at.

“When a top-tier team does a 10-0 run on you, that’s game, and I thought our kids got a slow start and did some stuff (to put us in that hole).” (Lewis had 11 points in the opening quarter, while the Rams managed just 10 as a team.)

Missed free throws also hurt her team’s cause: The Rams were 9 of 15 at the line; the Wildcats were 15 of 30. That six-point swing was the margin of difference.

Sandia 77, Rams 64: It was looking pretty good Friday afternoon in a semifinal game, as the Rams had a 23-18 lead over the No. 2 Matadors early in the second period.

The Rams, though they never led again, used a 5-1 run to close out the first half and headed to the locker room down by three, 38-35. The Rams were lucky in that regard; the Matadors sank five consecutive 3s in the first half, four of them in the second quarter.

A 14-4 Matadors’ outburst over the first four minutes of the third period spelled disaster, as Mabrey used three timeouts in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

The Matadors, like sharks, smelled blood in the water and kept pouring it on, and led by a dozen heading into the fourth quarter; the Rams trailed by as many as 18 points in the final eight minutes.

By game’s end, the Rams had committed 22 turnovers to a mere 10 for the Matadors.

Syndey Benally led the way with 22 points, with Hope Giddings and Audri Wright adding 14 apiece, and Nadia Randall and reserve Olivia Montaño scoring 10 apiece.

Rio Rancho had a balanced attack of sorts: Makenna Lee had 22 points, the other four starters combined for 22 points and bench players, led by Madi Martinez’s 15, added 20 points.

“I was very proud of our effort. I thought that our girls competed, and that’s what I asked them to do,” Mabrey said. “I pretty much burned all my timeouts in that quarter to get us back on track, and that’s what really good teams do. … That was kind of the difference in the game, really.

“Our defense is going to get better – it wasn’t particularly good today,” she continued. “But, again, Sandia’s a very good basketball team.

She’s not dismayed, as young as the season is.

“I feel like we have all the pieces that we need to be pretty salty in March,” she concluded, assuming the Rams won’t miss as many layups or turn the ball over as much.

“We’ve got athletic girls; we’ve got coachable girls. We’ve got high energy. We’ve got big kids. We’ve got intelligent guards. Those little girls defend,” she said. “So, yes, I feel like we have all the pieces. I’m super-excited about our basketball team.”

Rams 61, Centennial 30: The Rams were firing on all cylinders last Thursday afternoon against the Hawks, whose 3-0 lead was their lone lead. Rio Rancho scored the next 18 points and left little doubt as to the outcome and easily slipped into the semifinals.

It was 14-3 at the end of the first quarter and 29-12 at halftime. In the second half, as the Hawks matched their first-half output with a dozen points in the third period, they didn’t threaten the Rams, then ahead, 45-24.

Lee scored seven of her team-high 12 points in the fourth period, as Centennial managed single digits for the third time in four periods.

Ten Rams scored, although Centennial’s Audi Torrez was the game’s high scorer with 14 points.

RAM DUNKS: The Rams close out December with a game at Eldorado on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. There, they’ll contend with junior Bella Hines, the state’s best player, who dropped 40 on the visiting Cleveland Storm on Dec. 12. The Eagles beat the Rams 44-41 last December in the RAC, with Hines scoring 33. Hines had 33 in the Eagles’ semifinal win over Clovis on Friday evening.

… The Rams last won the Otero Invite, which ran under a different name for a few seasons, since 2018. In 2021, they got to the championship game but lost to La Cueva, 44-25.