By MARIO AGUIRRE | STAFF WRITER
EDINBURG — Sitting on the bench last season was more of the difficult experiences Javier Alaniz had to endure.
He tore his ACL during the football team’s season opener, forcing him to miss the entire year as La Joya Palmview failed to make the playoffs for the first time in three seasons.
“It was frustrating,” Alaniz said. “I saw a team that was trying. And I wanted to play, but I couldn’t.”
Watching from the sideline, he noticed the Lobos were missing “the leadership, the focus, the heart.”
He described the same characteristics his teammates by and large say define the 6-foot-3 post.
“He brings that intensity,” guard Orlando Muñoz said. “He brings a lot of fire to that defensive side of the court, and offensively it’s his basketball IQ. Last year, we didn’t have a dominant leader, but he’s come in and really stepped it up (this season).”
Alaniz needed all of six months following surgery before returning to the court in March. To ensure his health going into basketball season, he elected to stop playing football, calling it “a really hard choice,” especially considering the Lobos wound up earning their first postseason berth in program history.
Alaniz doesn’t believe much was lost in terms of chemistry as he sat out the year. He’s played with Muñoz and Petey Huerta, the other central figures on the team, since their days in middle school. And while recovering from the injury, the Lobos were able to develop Anthony Magallon, a 6-foot-4 post to play alongside Alaniz.
Coach Andy Saenz called it a blessing in disguise to find a suitable post threat to pair with Alaniz. And while Saenz was reluctant to point to Alaniz’s absence as a reason why the Lobos missed out on the playoffs, there was discernible difference Friday when he wasn’t on the floor late in the game against Laredo Alexander.
Alaniz manned the middle, hedging on screens and reading the defense. He poked the ball away several times, including a sequence where he came away with three steals on consecutive possessions, throwing it ahead for a layup on the last pick to take a 50-46 edge as Palmview pulled away late in the third quarter.
That same aggressiveness, however, cost Alaniz, who fouled out late in regulation as Alexander rallied and nearly tied the game, before the Lobos blocked a shot at the buzzer to pull out a 63-61 win in the Craig Smith Tournament.
“It changed our strategy not having him out there,” said Saenz, who doesn’t have Magallon yet at full strength. “We didn’t have our defensive anchor out there, so we had to go a lot smaller.”
Alaniz enters this season as an improved scorer around the block with a better touch. Even after sitting out the year, teammates said he “looks better than ever.”
It’s part of the reason why the Lobos are 6-1 after beating Zapata on Friday, with the playoffs — and even a district title — very much in mind.
“We should be able to take that next step,” said Muñoz, who was part of Palmview’s last playoff run in 2012. “We have all the tools we need. We just need to work as a team.”
On a game-to-game basis, it seems, Palmview can turn to any number of players for scoring. They have Alaniz near the basket but he has viable shooting threats in Muñoz and Huerta. As a team, they drilled six 3-pointers against Alexander. Later that afternoon against Zapata, they buried four.
It allows Palmview to spread the floor, running an inside-outside game it hopes can translate into the team’s third playoff appearance in the past four years. Adding Alaniz to the mix gives the Lobos that extra boost.
“He’s been awesome,” Huerta said. “I think he’s one of the top centers in the Valley right now. He pushes us to get better. He’s a great defender and he plays with a lot of heart.
“Like everyone else, we’re looking to get the district championship. It’ll be tough, but I think we could make it. We just have to stick together.”