Elida pulls away to extend streak to eight

ALBUQUERQUE — There they were, two local girls basketball rivals — second-seeded Melrose and top-seeded Elida — on the grand stage of Albuquerque's Dreamstyle Center in Friday's Class 1A state championship game. Could it get much better?

Well, it was always going to be better for whichever team won, and in Friday's case, it was Elida pulling away in the second quarter and making it a record-tying eight consecutive state titles by beating Melrose 58-44.

Elida is a state champ yet again, continuing the streak that began in 2011.

"It's pretty incredible," said Jaden Isler, Tigers head coach for four of those titles. "To be able to win all of them that you're in is quite a feat. ... Man, that's a hard thing to do."

It's especially meaningful for seniors like Lacy Ferguson, who outscored Melrose 10-9 in the first quarter en route to a game-high 22.

"Seventh grade, me and (fellow senior) Kasyn Creighton were the managers," Ferguson recalled. "So, we've been through it all. We moved up. They did away with Class B; we moved up to A. Harder competition ... I've been on four of the state championships. Every year it's just been harder and harder."

For Elida sophomore Alyssa Bargas, who scored 15, it was like winning a championship with family.

"In my opinion," she said, "everyone on my team is my sister."

For the Lady Buffaloes, it was a matter of not scoring enough when they had opportunities.

"We didn't execute our offense very well," Melrose head coach Caleb King said. "We were trying to take tough shots and we didn't get into the flow of the game. ... Whenever you do that against a team like that, they're going to make you pay."

"We wanted to get the win," Melrose's Nataley Mondragon said, "but a good, competitive team like Elida is hard to even match."

Elida won the season series 3-1. Elida swept the regular season, only to have Melrose win the 4-1A championship 36-32.

The early stages of this season's fourth installment on Friday seemed to promise a back-and-forth game, with Elida's Cambree Bargas hitting a bank shot to open the scoring and Melrose tallying the next five points — on a runner by Mondragon and a right-elbow trey from Brette DeVaney.

Elida then scored the next five in a row, all from Ferguson, with a fast-break layup and a three-pointer.

Hailey Martin's putback tied it at 7, but that was where the back-and-forth stage ended.

With 3:17 to go in the first quarter, Ferguson knocked down a pair of free throws, giving the Lady Tigers a 9-7 lead, which as it turned out, had put them ahead for good.

Ferguson soon followed with a trey, and after a short jumper by DeVaney made it 12-9, Elida's Kasyn Creighton beat the first-quarter buzzer with an inside shot that gave her team a five-point edge heading into the second.

It was 16-9 after Ferguson and Creighton each went 1-for-2 from the line early in the new quarter, and though Mondragon hit a runner to bring Melrose within 16-11, Elida then went on an 8-0 run that included, in order — a Cambree Bargas basket, a steal and layup from Alyssa Bargas, a Creighton turnaround shot, and a short baseline jumper from Alyssa Bargas, putting Elida up 24-11.

Landry Widner quickly answered the Alyssa Bargas jumper with a three-pointer that made it a 10-point game, but Bargas answered with a three of her own, starting a new 7-0 Elida run, the other four points of which were also scored by Bargas, on two field goals. She and Ferguson had 11 first-half points each.

Widner hit a three to bring Melrose within 31-17 by halftime, but Creighton hit another turnaround to open the third-quarter and keep the drumbeats going toward the Lady Tigers' eighth straight crown.

Melrose did close to within eight points (50-42) with 3:08 left in the fourth quarter, but Ferguson was fouled on the other side of the court, hit the front end of a one-and-one to earn a second shot, then sank that one to make it a 10-point game with 2:58 remaining.

The Lady Tigers stayed up by double digits from then on, as they headed to their historic win, one they'll savor for a while.

"You don't know when you're going to get back," Isler said. "This run's been incredible, but we're going to enjoy it while we can. All the girls, they're three- and four-sport athletes, so we only have them for a small period of time. So really, we won't get them back for basketball type of stuff until the summer. So we're going to enjoy it, let them go on and be great at other things like track and volleyball. And then when it comes summertime, it's time for them to get back to work."

The Lady Buffaloes, meanwhile, won't think about what might've been, but rather what can still be.

"We've been blessed with a great program," King said, "and we have a pretty young team. ... We'll bring 'em all back and hopefully bring 'em back here and get a different result."