Time to dissect the state basketball tournament brackets

Let’s not waste time. The state tournament brackets are out, and time to dive in. The 40 first-round girls games are Friday night. The boys follow on Saturday.

BOYS: Hobbs, Sandia, Albuquerque High, Cleveland. These were the four most immediate winners in the Class 5A bracket. Those are the teams seeded 2, 3, 6 and 7.

Of course, they “win” because they are on the opposite (bottom) side of the bracket, away from Volcano Vista, and the truth of it is, any team with aspirations of winning a state championship is going to have to go through Volcano in one round or another. Better to have that chance in the state final.

The Hawks are attempting to do what no team since Hobbs (1999-2002) has done, and that is win four straight titles in the largest class. They open against No. 16 West Mesa.

Rio Rancho is a possibly intriguing 14 seed; the Rams have 12 losses, but more than half of them are by seven or fewer points, as they prepare to face Sandia in the first round. Atrisco Heritage looms as an extremely dangerous 10 seed, and the Jaguars, now fully healthy, certainly have the potential to win multiple games in this postseason. Atrisco faces Cleveland in the first round, and what a tremendous guard matchup there with Remy Albrecht of the Storm and Latavious Morris of the Jags. Both those dudes could go for 40-plus.

The 8-9 is an attractive matchup between La Cueva and Cibola; the Cougars won a 58-55 decision in the regular season and had the school’s best boys basketball season in nearly a decade. (They won 19 games in the 2016-17 season). The Bears have made enormous strides since November.

“They’ve improved more than any team in the state from start to finish, and they’re a handful because they’re physical,” Sandia coach Danny Brown said of La Cueva.

Roswell and Organ Mountain (the Knights were in the championship game 12 months ago) are in the top half of the draw with Volcano Vista.

St. Pius earned the top seed in 4A, and it’s fair to wonder if Artesia’s out-of-the-blue loss to Portales last week caused a flip-flop between these two. The Bulldogs are seeded second.

No secret that the 4A boys bracket could be a free-for-all. Think about 8 seed Highland, the defending champion that just took St. Pius to overtime the other night, and those two are seeded to meet in the quarterfinals.

Think about Valley, the 7 seed on the bottom half, where it could face Artesia – a team the Vikings already beat, just before Christmas – in the quarters. Think about a big Albuquerque Academy squad that has great upside. Think about Española Valley, the 3 seed, and let’s hope they get to the Pit and bring their thousands of fans with them. The Pit is always better when the EV boys are on the guest list.

Robertson’s two recent wins over St. Michael’s add a ton of suspense to the 3A bracket, which has the Horsemen at No. 1 and the Cardinals at No. 2. Robertson’s path to the title game could include a matchup with No. 3 Tohatchi, while St. Mike’s might see defending champion Navajo Prep in the quarters, and the Eagles are a dangerous 8 seed.

Albuquerque’s Bosque School is seeded fifth.

There will be a new champion in 2A, since the Academy for Technology and the Classics out of Santa Fe moved up to 3A this season, where ATC didn’t make the playoff field. Texico has the top seed here, and neither of the teams that beat the 25-2 Wolverines (Portales, Logan) are in this bracket. Santa Rosa is seeded two; oddly enough, if the seeds hold throughout, we’d have a Texico-Santa Rosa final, and those are the same two schools who met for a 2A football championship in November.

Albuquerque is strongly represented in the 2A field, with Legacy Academy (up from 1A last year) at a 6, Oak Grove Classical Academy at 13 and Menaul, a possibly interesting floater seeded 14th.

Logan, the top seed in 1A, went a combined 5-1 against the teams seeded second and third, those being Melrose and Fort Sumner/House. But Melrose beat Logan about three weeks ago, adding some spice to things.

GIRLS: Can anyone get in the way of a Hobbs-Sandia final? That’s really the overriding question for the rest of the field over the next couple of weeks. The Eagles are at the top of the bracket, the defending state champion Matadors at the bottom. Those two opened the season against one another and are overwhelmingly favored to close against one another.

Good to see Albuquerque High be rewarded with a 5 seed after another stellar regular season; the Bulldogs, if they survive Carlsbad on Friday, could pair up with traditional power Farmington in the quarters.

For me, the most interesting first-rounder is No. 10 Rio Rancho at No. 7 Los Lunas. The young Rams (I feel like this team is one really good scoring forward away from being a state championship contender as early as next year) had a terrific run through the District 1-5A tournament.

Mayfield was seeded third, and the Trojans could see La Cueva in the quarters.

I’ll say it for the record: Gallup beating Kirtland Central on Saturday night in the district tournament championship game was the best thing that could have happened to the 4A bracket.

Why? Easy. Because if these two meet up again on March 14 in the Pit, the energy level, which already was going to be off the charts, ramps up another two or three notches now that Gallup is on the board.

Can anyone interfere with a Gallup-KC final? No, not really. Valencia, the 4 seed, played Kirtland Central within eight points in the regular season; those two are seeded to meet in the semifinals. There is that. On Gallup’s bottom half, there’s nobody equipped to handle the Bengals, that I can see.

Navajo Prep won state a year ago and is the No. 1 seed this month in 3A. The team the Eagles beat in the final last year, Tohatchi, is also in the top half of the draw. West Las Vegas anchors the bottom half as a 2 seed. Navajo Prep and West Las Vegas split two games in the regular season.

Two schools located very far away from each other, Tatum and Mesa Vista, are the top two seeds in 2A. The only undefeated team in New Mexico, in either gender, is the Class 1A co-op between Roy and Mosquero. The Blue are 26-0. Another co-op, Fort Sumner/House, is seeded second, and that group lost 58-49 to Roy/Mosquero in a tournament final on Dec. 21.

If you’re looking for the state’s second-highest profile recruit (after Sandia’s Sydney Benally), Harper Dunn and the Corona/Vaughn co-op are a 7 seed and could run into Fort Sumner/House in the quarters. This is notable because FS/H needed overtime to beat the Corona/Vaughn team early in December. Dunn recently broke New Mexico’s career blocked shots record, and the 6-foot-6 Dunn is still only a sophomore.

{p class=”tncms-inline-link”}2025 New Mexico State Basketball Tournament brackets and schedules