By Chuck Constantino

For West Valley Preps

TUCSON - The third time was the charm for the Tucson Pueblo girls basketball team.

No. 2 Pueblo trounced seventh-seeded Cactus 62-45 in the 4A state quarterfinals at home to overcome the demons of losing in the quarterfinals the two previous seasons.

The Warriors will play No. 3 Flagstaff on Saturday at Grand Canyon University at 2:15 p.m. in the state semifinal. This appearance will be a program-first for the Warriors, who just a few seasons ago, couldn't buy a win.

“Its crazy because my daughter is a senior, and my older daughter used to play here, and we sucked,” Pueblo coach Ismael Galindo said. “It took a while to build it, two years in a row to the quarterfinals to get beat. This is a good feeling."

With about 90 seconds left in the game, Galindo subbed out his starters and started to strut his way down the bench, dishing out high-fives to his players.

“Right now, I'm feeling excited. I just can't believe it,” Pueblo senior shooting guard Nysa Urena said. “We've always wanted to come here, to get to this point. We've gotten better and better, and we've gotten to the point where its here, its there now.”

The Warriors (28-2) grabbed a 14-8 lead over the Cobras after the first quarter, and jumped out to a 34-21 advantage at halftime thanks to a pressure zone defense that forced 14 first half turnovers, and 24 in the game.

Pueblo held Cactus to 6-of-28 from the field in the first half.

“They played a great pressure defense, and we knew they would,” Cactus third-year coach Justin Shaver said. “One thing that they do that not a lot of teams do, is that they're so good about getting the matchups out of it, finding those people who are open and covering them up. And the second you think you have an open person, you got a defender coming in to collapse and take it away. We knew it was going to be tough, we made some mistakes early that were uncharacteristic and lost some momentum. It got to us early for sure. At times we just gave it up.”

Cactus senior Malena McDonald pulls up for a jumper against Pueblo during a Class 4A girls basketball semifinal in Tucson Feb. 16. [Patricia Santangelo of Cactus High School Yearbook/For West Valley Preps}[/caption]Galindo noted that he paid attention to game film of Cactus and noticed the team played at a slower pace than the Warriors did, and wanted to exploit that.

“I told them just to run the whole game,” Galindo said. “If you get tired, I'll pull you out for a breather.”

The Warriors finished with nine players in the scoring column. Sophomore center Jasmine Belt scored a game-high 14 points, senior wing Alba Urena added 10 points, while junior forward Summer Fox and junior forward Lourdes Guedes-Pereira chipped in with eight points apiece.

Junior guard Jaheleza Clark finished with a team-high 12 points, while sophomore center Olivia Lee tallied 10 points.

“They didn't make it easy, it was a very tough game, they came out strong and we just didn't do what we needed to get the best of us,” Clark said.

The loss marked the final game for six Cactus seniors, who have played for Shaver for their entire varsity careers. After the game, Shaver expressed what the group meant to him.

“This program went from winning four or five games to this point,” said Shaver. “Its been amazing to come out and do that. I told them just now that they can look back and whatever happens in this program, if it continues to be at a high level, they're the ones who made it happen, took it to that point. Theyre the ones who got it there, that's their legacy that they left here, something they can be proud of. I'm proud of them.”

Cactus senior Janine Nelson shoots a jump shot against Pueblo junior Summer Fox in the Feb. 16 4A girls quarterfinal in Tucson. [Patricia Santangelo of Cactus High School Yearbook/For West Valley Preps][/caption]