Centennial overpowers Clovis in second half

Clovis High’s boys continued to make life hard on their opponents on Friday night at the Rock. The Wildcats are simply having a tough time generating offense.

The Cats hung with a quality Class 5A Centennial squad for most of three quarters, but the Hawks ran away in the final period with a 28-9 edge for a 74-44 victory.

link Staff photo: Kevin Wilson

Clovis senior forward Logan Cole draws contact from Centennial’s Darren Smith on a second-quarter drive.

It was Centennial’s fourth win in five nights — the Hawks beat Hobbs 63-62 in the finals of the Eagles’ tournament on Wednesday night. If they can make their way back today, they are scheduled to play again tonight in Artesia.

Meantime, CHS was playing its third game in four nights and was scheduled to host Las Cruces High tonight. That game was postponed late Friday night, athletic director Dale Fullerton said.

The Cats (3-8) led a couple of times in the first half, including 23-22 with under two minutes left before the Hawks (10-2) scored the final seven points.

“I thought Clovis had a good game plan in the first half, and executed really well,” Centennial coach Steve Heredia said. “We made a few adjustments and things started clicking.”

Clovis went up and down with the Hawks early, rallying from an early 12-3 deficit to pull to 14-13 by quarter’s end.

The relatively inexperienced Cats have had trouble finding the basket most of the season, and that continued against Centennial. They finished just 14-of-27 from the free-throw line and committed 30 turnovers to nine for the Hawks.

“I thought in the first half we were able to stay with them,” CHS coach Scott Robinson said. “Free throws really hurt us (4-of-10 in the half), or we maybe could’ve been ahead at halftime.”

Senior Tristen Pautler’s 3-pointer cut the deficit to 29-26 early in the third quarter, but Centennial went on a 7-0 run to finally get the margin to double figures.

Junior point guard Cesar Molina led Centennial with 18 points, with senior Omar Baez added 12 and sophomore Joe Satterfield 10. All but one of the Hawks’ players scored.

Heredia said his team had been trying to condition all season in anticipation of this stretch.

“We’re trying to get our depth going,” he said. “When you play this many games, you have to have some fresh legs out there, and I thought my bench played really well tonight.”

Junior guard Tucker Dobbs led the Cats with 12 points.

The Cats have another busy week on tap, visiting Canyon on Tuesday, hosting Lovington on Friday and traveling to Roswell High on Saturday. The Friday game was added when Lovington couldn’t finish out the final two days of this week’s Big XII Holiday Invitational at The Rock.