Harlingen High shoots and steals past Donna High.
NATHANIEL MATA | STAFF WRITER
DONNA — Harlingen High and Donna High were tied at four minutes into the game.
That’s when the Cardinals put on the pressure on both sides of the ball to take over the game for a 62-45 road victory.
“Lately, we’ve been getting in a slump where we start off really slow and it takes us a while to adjust and see what our opponent does,” Harlingen senior Taegan Dickey said. “Then from then on, that’s when we start to turn it up.”
Maybe it was a slow start, maybe it was the constant direction from Harlingen coach Ashley Moncivaiz, who wasn’t happy with her team’s first half…even as they built their lead.
Harlingen went on a 10-0 run after the early draw to take a 14-4 lead. Bianca Rodriguez and Ariel Leal drilled 3-pointers to help build the cushion.
The Cardinals hit five first-half threes to Donna’s two.
Harlingen’s full-court press worked wonders to stifle Donna’s offense. The Cards came up with 18 steals, which resulted in plenty of quick layups.
“The way we go into our seasons is we always want to push ourselves to give effort 100 percent,” Moncivaiz said. “When we go into different situations we’ll know if the kids are ready when it comes down to district and playoffs. Now after today, we only have 11 games and we have two and a half months left of basketball.”
Harlingen improves to 19-5 on the season and has shown plenty of evidence to be in the conversation as the RGV’s top girls team.
“I would definitely say that our team has it all this year,” Dickey said. “We have a lot of players that are offensive players, that are defensive players, that are both. And I think that’s what really helps us.”
Dickey led her team with 16 points. The senior knows road victories will be a crucial part of reaching late-season goals.
“It’s very important for us to win at home and away,” Dickey said. “Because in the playoffs you’re not always going to be at your home court. You’re going to be playing at all sorts of different areas and different crowds.”
The home team found value in the contest, despite the loss.
“Nobody we play is going to play that hard, nobody we play is going to be that quick or that fast,” Donna coach Kevin Kromer said after the game. “Close, but not exactly the same. I thought we did a pretty good job of breaking it at times and of course other times we made our mistakes. I like the fact that we could hang in there.”
The teams met last season and Kromer said that playing the class 6A powerhouse close for most of the game was an improvement. The coach explained the value of playing a strong non-district schedule before starting the 32-5A campaign.
“It puts us through a lot of stress and a lot of strain,” Kromer said. “It gets us battle-tested so we know what our team will do when they get pressured, in tight games or whatever against tougher competition. So that when we face our district it’s maybe not as good but at least we’ve been through tougher competition than what we might face in district.”
Seniors Miranda Sandoval and Brianna Quesada had 17 and 16-points, respectively, to keep Donna in the hunt. Depth hurt Donna because no other player made more than one field goal.
“They have to learn to lead by example first and then they show the kids how to practice hard and take it seriously. That comes with time because they’re usually not natural born leaders, they have to learn. They’re the example to the younger ones of how to play.”