The Bayfield High School girls basketball program had to wait more than 16 years, but Tuesday night the Wolverines finally exorcised their Demons.

In their first and only rematch since the two teams played in 1995, Bayfield banished Durango 61-48, evening out the lifetime regional rivalry series at 1-1.

In the first matchup, the bigger-school Demons won 56-28.

“We wanted that game really bad ... it hurts a little bit more,” said DHS senior post Taylor Perry, who said girls on both teams have known each other since childhood. “It makes it all the more distasteful.”

Par for the course this season, the Wolverines’ defense proved too stout for their opponent; the Demons turned the ball over 28 times as they struggled to break Bayfield’s signature full-court press.

BHS assistant coach Eva Duce – a Ouray High School alumna who also played at Fort Lewis College – said the Bayfield girls decided to make the press their identity over Christmas break, and Taylor Harrison said defense has been the key for the Class 3A Wolverines’ 12-2 record, including Tuesday night’s win over the Class 4A Demons.

“That’s a trait our team has that most people don’t focus on, but we’ve got really great defense from everyone,” Harrison said.

Duce said the Wolverines – ranked No. 8 in their classification by coloradopreps.com – try to turn defense into offense, forcing turnovers and turning them into points. And when the Wolverines did recover the ball on one of their 16 steals or Durango’s myriad stray passes, they did just that by penetrating into the paint and finding slick passes to teammates or putting the ball up on the glass.

The Wolverines always penetrate, Duce said, but Tuesday they did a good job of knowing when to dish and when to just go up.

Kayla Strobel had a game-high 18 points, Candace Shaw added 15 and Tia Neeley 11. Strobel and Shaw had just one 3-pointer apiece, as most of their points dropped on layups or short jumpers.

Durango, on the other hand, struggled to find penetration, despite its height advantage. Feeding Perry and Abby Surmeier at the post still proved to be the Demons’ most profitable attack, even though passes sometimes lost their way in Bayfield’s rotating zone.

Once Bayfield switched from man-to-man defense to the zone, Durango had to try playing “sneaky,” finesse defense, Perry said, hitting outside shots instead of relying on its power offense.

Surmeier led the Demons with 13 points, six of them coming from beyond the arc.

Perry, whom DHS head coach Nancy Smith said “posted up and took it to people” scored 12 points down low, and Molly Barnes scored 11, nine of them on 3-pointers including one from deep as Durango trailed in the fourth quarter.

“You take what you can get,” Barnes said. “Time isn’t really an option.”

Time wasn’t a problem for Durango until the second half, though.

The two teams played to a stalemate in the first quarter, trading basket for basket until Bayfield led 15-13 at the end of one quarter.

The game started to slip from the Demons’ grasp in the second, when the Wolverines went up 29-21 after a couple of quick turnovers with about 2 minutes to go in the half, but a last-second layup from DHS’s Raquel Delgado showed the game still was anyone’s for the taking at 29-24 as the halftime buzzer sounded.

But when Shaw took the ball full-court for a layup to kick off the second half, she proved the Wolverines’ still had momentum behind them. Two more quick baskets from Strobel and one from Breetta Moe rounded out an 8-0 run for the Wolverines, and minutes later, a 10-second violation forced by Bayfield’s press finished off the third quarter with Bayfield up 31-21.

Perry said she thought her team performed well on offense but started to panic in the face of the press in the second half and lost its defensive intensity.

“Just ’cause we’re in a zone doesn’t mean we get to kick it,” said Perry, daughter of Heidi and Joel Perry.

The prettiest play of the night sealed the Demons’ fate.

On a fast break, Shaw hit a charging Moe with a spot-on pass to beat her only defender for an easy layup. Moe’s layup rolled off the rim, but a leaping Keenan Moreta tipped the ball in pro-style to send the crowd of about 300 roaring.

From there on out, the Wolverines picked apart the Demons’ zone and crashed the boards, pushing the lead to as many as 18 points before settling on the 13-point margin.

“Complete win. We won every quarter,” Duce said. “We were controlling tempo, we took care of the ball, and we pushed it when we had it.”

Smith praised Bayfield as a “great team” and said it was a challenge to think through playing a team that plays with a different style. She said the loss will help the 4-12 Demons continue to improve.

“It was a good test to show us what we need to work on,” Smith said.

And just like an academic test, getting a ‘D’ doesn’t mean you’ve failed, she said, it just shows the team where to concentrate their efforts, including not panicking under a press and making strong passes with good fakes to avoid turnovers.

Defeat or not, Perry said finally playing a rivalry game against a local team was a privilege, and she said she hopes it continues on.

And even Harrison, who said she’s “not really into rivalries,” said the matchup was particularly fun and made her play a little bit harder.

DHS Athletic Director Sheldon Keresey said he’d like to create a regional rivalry between the two schools, and if the matchup is competitive, he said the two schools will look at continuing to face off in the future.

“Oh, that would be fun” said Smith, who’s only coached the Demons since December. “I would love to see basketball grow.”

jsojourner@durangoherald.com