Near the end of Moriarty’s Dec. 16 loss to the Clovis Wildcats in the annual Bruce King Tournament championship, Jordan Brown sank a 3-point basket and pumped his fists as if he had just nailed a game-winning shot.
It reflected the passion that the Pintos possess this season.
Despite falling 73-59 to the Wildcats, the Pintos never gave up. There was no loss of energy or hustle until the final buzzer.
“That’s who we are right now, we’re a team that’s gonna play hard till the end,” Moriarty’s first-year head coach Caleb Encinias said after the loss. “They play with passion and all the fire in the world.”
The snowstorm that hit the area on Dec. 14 forced Moriarty to condense its annual tournament from three days to two.
“We pushed it back a day, split the brackets in half and had a Green Bracket and a White Bracket, and we had two champions instead of one,” Moriarty’s athletic director Joe Anaya said. “Everybody got two games instead of three, so it worked out.”
The Pintos, playing in the Green Bracket, upended the Class 2A Estancia Bears 70-54 in their opening game. With the victory, the Pintos advanced to the bracket championship the next day and faced Class 5A Clovis’ junior varsity team.
Despite being a JV squad, Clovis proved to be a high-scoring opponent that the Pintos ultimately couldn’t contain.
“That’s a heck of an offensive team. It’s not your typical JV,” Encinias said about Clovis. “That team can play with probably anybody in 4A.”
Clovis took an early first-quarter lead and surged ahead by 10 points in the second quarter.
The Pintos then went on an 8-0 run to trim the deficit. Moriarty’s Jordan Brown hit a jump shot with 45 seconds left in the second quarter to cut Clovis’ lead to 28-26 at halftime.
“I think we had a lot of momentum at that point,” said Brown, who scored a team-high 21 points for the Pintos. “We just needed to come out strong in the third quarter.”
The Pintos started the third stanza with the same energy that they closed out the first half with, and when Aidyn Pacheco powered through a pair of Clovis defenders to sink a layup, the score was tied at 30-30.
“At that moment, we were kind of just trying to pick it all up, trying to just crawl back,” Pacheco said. He finished with four points.
But a spate of turnovers contributed to the Pintos downfall, allowing Clovis to regain the lead for good. The Wildcats also hit a flurry of 3-pointers to widen their lead.
“I think turnovers and second-chance points is what lost this game,” Encinias said.
Moriarty’s Isaiah Quintana scored 10 points in the Clovis game. Jonathan Beukelman chipped in 10.
Encinias noted that playing two games on consecutive days, one against a local school, may have contributed to the Pintos’ loss to Clovis.
“We’re not used to playing back-to-back days, and we played Estancia last night, which to the people in this area, that’s a very emotional game, so I don’t know if we had an adrenaline dump after last night,” Encinias said.
Beating Estancia, a 2A school, and then losing to 5A Clovis to take second place in one of the brackets of its own tournament, illustrates how Moriarty’s season has gone to date. The Pintos have beaten a handful of smaller schools but have come up short against tougher opponents.
“We’re beating the teams we’re supposed to beat,” Encinias said, adding, “The good teams beat the teams that they’re not supposed to beat, and the great teams beat them all, so it’s just part of that process of winning the games that we’re supposed to, and you know, we’re just trying to work every day to get better to beat those teams that we’re not supposed to.”
Perhaps the Pintos’ biggest challenge of the season will come over the next few weeks. Moriarty played two consecutive road games this past week, first at defending state champion Albuquerque Academy on Dec. 19, followed by a trip to Las Vegas to face the undefeated Las Vegas Dons on Dec. 21. The Pintos are scheduled to play at Portales on Jan. 9. Moriarty will then play its fourth straight road game Jan. 11 at McCurdy School in Española.
“We gotta just lock in, practice real hard, and be ready to compete and execute our plays,” Pacheco said about the upcoming games.
Encinias said he is confident that Moriarty can be competitive with any team on its schedule, noting that his players give him everything they have every time they take the court.
“We’re gonna do whatever it takes to put ourselves in a position to win,” Encinias said. “We’ve got a team that’s not scared to lose. They’re fearless.”