After last season’s third-place finish at the state tournament, Ignacio High School boys basketball head coach Chris Valdez thought he’d be bringing back a top-10 team.
The Bobcats were second in the preseason poll and dropped to No. 4 after going 2-2 against three larger schools and one the same size. They opened the year with a loss at Pagosa Springs before going 2-1 at the Mountain Top Classic at Adams State University in Alamosa.
IHS (2-1) will play at home for the first time this year when the Bobcats play Center at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the SunUte Community Center. The Bobcats will be playing most of their games there while the high school is being renovated.
Center enters the game at 2-1 after advancing to the final of the Thunderbird Shootout, then losing to Sangre de Cristo 53-30.
As for the Bobcats, they bring back two of the team’s top-three scorers from last year in junior Wyatt Hayes and senior Adison Jones.
The team graduated four seniors out of their playing rotation, including big men Justin Carver and Kelton Richmond.
“Kelton was physical. Justin was real long and lanky,” Valdez said after a November scrimmage. “I think the quickness can make up for a big part of that game.”
Four guards who started for IHS at one point last season return this season, including Jones, who plays more as a small forward. Overall, five Bobcats on this season’s team played in the state tournament last season.
“It was valuable because you’re always going to want to play in big games and not get nervous,” said Hayes, son of Cindy and Tim Hayes. “It helped us with that, and we can bring our leadership down to the other guys.”
Those “other guys” include Joaquin King, Austin McCaw, Kruz Pardo and Xavier Reynolds. Their development will be key to the Bobcats’ potential return to the state tournament.
“We’ve got four good kids that are going to fill good role positions for us,” Valdez said. “I think if we can get one or two of them to play more minutes, we’ll be as good as we could have been last season.”
Besides the three games they’ve played against larger classification schools, the Bobcats have two more such games on the schedule – a Jan. 8 date with Durango at Fort Lewis College and the annual Pine River rivalry against Bayfield.
“Every year we bulk up our schedule more and more,” Valdez said. “We’re starting off better than we started last year. We’re playing tougher teams, obviously, early. To get to that (next) level is going to be bringing other people up to the level of those five starters and being consistent on the floor.”
kgrabowski@durangoherald.com
