3A boys: St. Michael's leans on size, steadiness to claim title

For Dakota Montoya, there was a difference between last season and this season.

Last year, his first leading St. Michael’s storied boys basketball program? Those games blew by for the first-time head coach, a full 32 minutes of basketball gone in an instant.

“I mean, 32 minutes, you blinked and they were done,” said the former assistant at Clayton High School. “I think it was just a process of getting sped up (in) the moment and learning (from it).”

This year? Not the case. Montoya — and his team — was comfortable and confident. Anybody could give them their best punch, but things never went too fast, never went too slow.

Just steady.

“And I think that,” Montoya said, “was the difference.”

The top-seeded Horsemen showed as much Saturday, beating reigning champ Robertson 70-57 in a rematch of last year’s Class 3A state title game for the program’s 13th blue trophy.

Led by Kamal Smith’s game-high 28 points, the long and tall Horsemen (26-5) used their size as an advantage, outscoring Robertson 44-22 in the paint. St. Michael’s also outrebounded the smaller Cardinals 50-35, grabbing a staggering 28 offensive boards to feed a steady, unrelenting stream of second-chance points.

The Horsemen’s size advantage also played a role in putting three of Robertson’s four leading scorers in foul trouble. After Nathan Gonzales (15 points), Michael Marr (16 points) and Brian Rubin (eight points) all entered the final quarter with four fouls, the 6-foot-6 Gonzales picked up his fifth with 3:23 left, and St. Michael’s rode the Cardinals’ late implosion to a game-sealing 10-5 run.

“We lean on it,” Montoya said of the Horsemen’s size. “We know our strengths and we play to it. I don’t know what these parents did for us, but we’re blessed and we played to our game plan.”

With St. Michael’s leading 22-13 at the end of a back-and-forth first quarter, Robertson slugged back to match its rivals with an eight-point second quarter. The Horsemen missed as many free throws in the period, leaving nearly all in attendance feeling as if they could’ve held a much larger halftime lead than 30-21.

All except for St. Michael’s.

“(We were) confident,” Montoya said. “We’ve been here before.”

The Cardinals (20-13) again rallied in the third quarter, tying it at 40-40 off Michael Marr’s 3-pointer. But Gonzales picked up his fourth foul shortly after and St. Michael’s closed the quarter with a 48-42 lead, putting Robertson in an uncomfortable spot.

“My team needs me out there, and I know they need me out there,” Gonzales said. “It gets hard when they’re driving to the basket and I’m the only one in their way.”

And when Gonzales fouled out, a comeback seemed all but impossible. St. Michael’s Dillan McCoy (20 points) pushed the Horsemen’s lead to 10 before a flurry of foul shots grew it to as much as 16 in the game’s closing seconds.

“They hit some tough shots,” Montoya said. “But I think at the end of the day, slow and steady, methodical execution and disciplined basketball was what we leaned on, especially this year … They had their runs, they had their spurts, but I think we were steady, we were methodical (and) we stayed the course.”

Sean Reider covers college football and other sports for the Journal. You can reach him at sreider@abqjournal.com or via X at @lenaweereider.