NATHANIEL MATA | THE MONITOR
PHARR — The La Joya Juarez-Lincoln Huskies had a slow start in a hostile environment but didn’t let their beginning doom them in a 50-47 overtime win over the PSJA North Raiders on Saturday.
The Huskies kept their composure down the stretch in a game that turned into a dogfight in the late stages.
Juarez-Lincoln had a two-point lead with the game clock ticking down, but PSJA North’s Daunte Galvan knotted the score at 42 with 8.5 seconds to play to force overtime
Galvan also scored the first points of overtime with a 3-pointer to give the Raiders the lead and the momentum at home.
Huskies point guard Cruz Mendoza had all of his 17 points after halftime, including a 3 of his own to answer Galvan at the start of overtime.
“Coach told me to take the last shot. ‘Take the key shots. This is your team.’ And that’s what I did,” Mendoza said.
Eduardo “Lalo” Torres made a layup to put the Huskies on top and then hit one of two free throws to ice the game.
“I told him ‘Lalo, it’s good. Good shots. Knock down shots and win us the game,’” Mendoza said about the late-game exchange when Torres was at the foul line. “It’s our senior year, last year. We have to enjoy it.”
The Raiders jumped out to a 7-2 lead and then a 12-7 advantage at the end of the first quarter.
“We started off kind of shaky, coming into this environment over here, but our team responded pretty good,” Juarez-Lincoln coach Albert Carrillo said. “We did a good job defensively. We were trying to stop No. 10 (Daunte Galvan). He’s their best player, and overall great team defense. Way to fight these guys.”
Jose Galvan, who was assigned to stop Daunte Galvan, said he was happy with his individual defense.
“That was my man. That my defensive job the whole game — don’t let him score,” Jose Galvan said.
PSJA North’s Galvan had all of his 12 points from the fourth quarter on, but it was too little, too late.
The second quarter was Juarez-Lincoln’s best, outscoring PSJA North 14-5 in the frame. Jose Galvan, Andre Suarez and Torres made 3s in the second.
“At first, we were kind of cold. I didn’t think we had a good warm-up,” Carrillo said of the slow start. “But I told them, ‘Keep shooting, because that’s what we’ve been doing all summer, and pretty soon, they’re gonna fall.’ That’s what ended up happening, and that’s why we made a run.”
The game had no flow and a lot of whistles. Both teams had a player foul out, and even the late fourth and overtime featured travels, jump balls and fouls in key moments.
Juarez-Lincoln finished with seven 3-pointers field goals, and that was due in part to the foul trouble of their center Luis Garza.
The team’s biggest body only had four points but spent much of his time on the bench as a result of the calls. Garza eventually fouled out with more than five minutes to play.
“It was really tough, because our 32 is our leading scorer, leading rebounder, leading assists — he creates for everyone,” Jose Galvan said. “He’s one of our main threats. It was hard. We went small, but we fought through it. That’s all we do we fight, that’s how we learn.”
A season ago, the Huskies were 16-15 overall and 2-10 in district. The Raiders, on the other hand, were 28-8, 10-4 a season ago.
PSJA North lost nine seniors from last year’s roster.
Juarez-Lincoln starts five seniors. The group has played together much of their high school careers and has hopes that the experience will make for a strong season.
“It feels good,” Mendoza said. “It is our last year. We gotta go deep. We always dream about this, playing together and going deep.”