Cats rebound with rout

SANTA FE — The Clovis High Wildcats rebounded from their first loss of the season with a vengeance.

The Cats roared to a 22-0 lead after one quarter and had no trouble dispatching Los Lunas 63-24 on Saturday in the third-place game of the Capital City Invitational basketball tournament.

La Cueva beat Clovis (8-1) 59-47 in Friday’s semifinals.

Against Los Lunas, senior post Mario Caswell led the Cats in scoring for the second consecutive night, finishing with 17 points. Dominique Easterlin added 13, Justin Pinckney 12 and Zac Watters 11.

“The biggest thing is we learned some things from the La Cueva game,” CHS boys coach J.D. Isler said. “In our shootaround today, we put an emphasis on rebounding and having a defensive intensity on the ball.”

Clovis posted a 34-15 edge over the Tigers (3-5) on the boards, and limited them to just eight field goals.

“We really didn’t press them,” Isler said. “We just had to step up our intensity on defense, and we got a lot of deflections.

“I told our kids that the loss is not as important as what we learn from it.”

Isaiah Herrera led the Tigers with seven points, and was the only Los Lunas player with as many as two field goals.

La Cueva 59, Clovis 47 — The Bears (3-1), who faced Santa Fe in Saturday’s championship game, got scoring from seven players in an 18-9 domination of the fourth quarter to pull away from the Cats.

Jordan Pacheco led three La Cueva players in double figures with 14 points. Caswell scored 16 and senior guard Bud Willis added 10 for the Cats.

Capital City Tournament

Saturday

7th place

St. Michael’s 46, Pojoaque 41

5th place

Pueblo South 58, Taos 53

3rd Place

Clovis 63, Los Lunas 24

Championship

La Cueva 72, Santa Fe 70