BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
SAN JUAN — The first district meeting PSJA North and PSJA High looked like an intriguing matchup on paper. Both teams like to play fast on offense. The Raiders rely heavily on 3-point shooting while the Bears were averaging 59.7 points per game through three district games.
The Raiders and Bears didn’t come close to a high-scoring affair. PSJA North guards Catie Rodriguez and Carolina Sanchez combined for 28 points, however, in the Raiders’ 39-28 victory over the Bears on Wednesday afternoon.
The PSJA North (23-3) win pushed it to 3-1 in district competition, which forced a second-place tie with the Bears (20-7) in District 30-6A.
“We didn’t want to be two games back of the first-place team in the district (McAllen Memorial). We wanted to give ourselves a chance,” PSJA North coach Randy Bocanegra said. “If we can run off a few wins here, maybe we can have a chance to even things up with (McAllen) Memorial and see what happens after that. But we still have to take things one game at a time.”
PSJA High coach Nelly Treviño drew up a game plan to prevent the perimeter-oriented Raiders to heat up from 3-point range.
“Because we know they would rather shoot the 3, we held our guards off of them to make sure they wouldn’t step up and shoot 3’s,” Treviño said. “Once their guards get on a roll, they stay hot. That’s why we kept the score as low as we could, but that ended up hurting us down low a lot more than we would have liked. We had to hold off our ball-side guard to make sure they couldn’t dish it. Had we capitalized on easy missed shots on our side, it would have made a big difference.”
Sanchez took control of the game early, scoring seven of her nine points in the first quarter. The Raiders were clinging to a 15-14 lead in the second quarter before Rodriguez ripped off eight points in a row. She scored 10 in the second quarter and finished with a game-high 19.
“Teams know that I’m a shooter,” Rodriguez said. “They (PSJA High) put their best defender on me. Now that I don’t have the 3, I have to drive in. If they start moving back, then I’ll have the 3 again. I have to work off of what the defender is giving me.”
“If they weren’t going to give us outside shots, then we had to attack the paint to create some offense,” Bocanegra said. “Catie and Carolina have to score for us. I thought we also did a great job on the boards. We didn’t let them get many second- or third-shot opportunities.”
PSJA North and PSJA High were to meet in an early-season tournament game, but both teams declined to play in it. Several Raiders and Bears players were former teammates at the middle school level before they became district rivals.
“It’s always a big game for us like it is for them,” Treviño said. “PSJA North has been good for a long time, but we’re trying to build consistency. Our seniors have had three different head coaches since they were freshmen. We won 17 games last year and we’ve won 20 so far this year. They’re a great group of girls who work extremely hard. We could have had this one.”