Wolverines pull away from Warriors

Sports writer

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PORTALES — Playing its first game of the season, Gateway Christian hung with Texico for about 1 1/2 quarters in Saturday’s ENMU Kickoff at Greyhound Arena. Then the wheels fell off.

The Wolverines scored the final nine points of the half, then hit the Warriors with five 3-pointers in the third quarter — three by junior guard Braden Fraze — to blow it open en route to a 70-38 victory.

Warriors coach John Worrall said he could tell his team, which lost at Melrose in the 8-man state football finals on Nov. 21, was still making the transition to the roundball sport after only a few days of practice.

“We got through the first quarter fine,” he said. “After that, you could tell we weren’t in (basketball) shape.

“And as we got tired, turnovers started costing us.”

Boy, and how. Texico (3-0), which played mainly zone defense in the halfcourt, applied some halfcourt and three-quarters-court pressure to the Warriors.

While the Wolverines had only seven turnovers in the game, they forced Gateway (0-1) into 24 — and the margin was 17-3 in the middle two stanzas.

Texico went on a 20-2 run, capped by two 3-pointers by Fraze and another by senior Rafael Maldonado, to open a 20-point cushion three minutes into the third quarter.

“In each of the first three games, we’ve started off slow,” Texico coach Scott Karger said. “We talk about (bringing) energy, but we didn’t have as much as I wanted (early).

“We amped up our pressure a little bit and started being more aggressive in taking away some of the passing lanes. In the second half, we just started hitting shots.

Senior post Johnny Worrall, the coach’s son, led the Warriors with 10 points.

Meantime, senior guard Brannon Karger, the coach’s son, finished with 20 points for Texico, and freshman Dalton Thatcher added 16.

Thatcher said he wasn’t actually looking to score that much.

“At the start, I looked for teammates,” he said. “Towards the end they were leaving people open, but I looked to pass first unless there was an open lane.”

All told, nine of the 10 Texico players who saw action scored, including Fraze and sophomore center Nathan Phipps with nine apiece.

Scott Karger said the Wolverines expect a test on Tuesday at former district rival Tucumcari.

“Obviously, this feels good,” he said of his team’s start. “But we’ve got a really tough test Tuesday night at Tucumcari. That’ll let us know where we are.”

Roswell High 79, Ruidoso 37 — In the first of four games, the Class 5A Coyotes (3-0) overwhelmed Ruidoso with a 20-4 run through the first quarter, and were never headed.

Eleven of the Coyotes’ 13 players scored, led by junior guard Laker Slaton with 28 points and senior guard Daniel Amador with 16. Junior guard Ezra Anderson led the Warriors (1-2) with 12 points.