PUEBLO — Success is not a foreign concept in the Pueblo West High School girls basketball program.
The Cyclones have advanced to Class 4A Final Four twice in 2011-12 and 2012-13. Yet, since the school opened in 1997 they had never beat perennial power Pueblo South at the Colts’ home gym.
Until Tuesday that is.
Haley Simental scored 26 points and Shannon Sanchez added 12 points, powering West to a 48-40 victory over South in a key South-Central League game.
Pueblo West’s Shannon Sanchez, left, and her teammate Haley Simental. (Tracy Renck/CHSAANow.com)
“Any win in the South-Central League is great,” West coach Gil Lucero said. “This is a huge win for us to beat South at South. We had to be able to weather the storm and keep our composure and that’s what we were able to do.”
The Cyclones (14-4) are ranked No. 4 in the latest CHSAAnow.com poll, and improved to 5-0 in the S-CL. South (11-5) dropped to 3-2 in the S-CL. The Colts have won five girls state basketball championships, the last one coming during the 2012-2013 season.
Simental scored 10 of her 26 points in the fourth quarter and was 6-for-6 from the free throw — 4-for-4 in the final 58.3 seconds of the game.
“I practice free throws all the time and coach (Lucero) emphasizes free throws,” the senior Semintal said. “We all work on free throws and I think it makes it easier knowing my teammates trust me and I just knocked them down.”
The first half was sluggish as West had a 20-12 lead. The Cyclones controlled the tempo once again after they came out of the locker room, but the Colts kept hanging around and cut the deficit to 35-29 on Jenny Hugins’ 3-pointer at 4:24 of the fourth quarter. Hugins had a team-best 15 points for the Colts.
South kept applying the pressure and when Jaylyn Duran made a bucket the Colts still were within six points – 42-36 with 1:17 remaining.
Simental was fouled on West’s next possession, and made two free throws with 58.3 ticks left and two more at the 32-second mark. The latter two gave the Cyclones a 46-38 edge and the Colts would get no closer than eight points before the final buzzer.
“We wanted to keep the lead so we could win,” Simental said.
Sanchez scored all her points on 3-pointers — her last trey was with 3:26 on the clock.
“It feels great to get this win at South,” Sanchez said. “My teammates were setting me up (for shots) and I was able to knock them down for them.”
South played the game without its veteran coach Shannan Lane, who didn’t attend the game because of a family emergency, but senior Colt post player Sissy Hall wasn’t making any excuses for the defeat.
“We knew coach had her family emergency and we wanted to (win) for her family,” Hall said. “We just had a tough game. We tried fighting back, but it didn’t end up how we wanted. Our shots started to fall toward the end, but by that time it was too late.”