Huskies start fast, rout Eldorado in rare Monday matinee

This is roughly the part of the boys basketball season when Hope Christian’s athletic director puts the Huskies under the heat lamp.

Early matchups with Class 5A stalwarts Albuquerque High and Sandia already are in the rear-view mirror. Hope will play Volcano Vista next Monday in the first round of the Rio Rancho tournament. The Huskies will face Cleveland in the opener of the metro tournament the week after that.

Comparatively speaking, Monday afternoon’s nondistrict home game against Eldorado gave the Huskies some room to breathe.

Hope (3-2) scored the game’s first seven points, led 18-3, led 25-7, and the Huskies, ranked No. 6 in Class 4A, rode that hot start to an 82-57 win over the shorthanded Eagles in a rare early-week matinee.

“I think we’re right in the mix,” said veteran Hope Christian coach Jim Murphy following his 899th career victory with the boys program. He is well over 900 career wins, including one season coaching the Hope girls. He's also the Hope AD who sets out to create a demanding schedule. “We want to be peaking at the right time, but I like our group.”

The group he has is a roster with just two seniors, but the Huskies have lofty aspirations this season to challenge for a 4A blue trophy with the likes of Artesia, Albuquerque Academy, Highland and Del Norte.

Junior point guard Jayce Miera didn’t start Monday’s matchup, but he came off the bench and was an immediate sparkplug. He scored 11 points in the first quarter and 19 in the first half.

Hope as a team was on target from the start; it was 6-for-8 from the arc in the opening two quarters as the Huskies buried the Eagles (5-3) under a blizzard of long-range shots and transition baskets.

“We’re a great team,” Miera said. “We should be shooting it like that.”

Miera, plus those two aforementioned seniors, Isaac Aaron and Brayden Giron, all hit from distance in an impressive first quarter. Two drives and finishes by Miera made it 18-3, as Eldorado burned a couple of early timeouts in order to help stop the onslaught.

Miera’s 3 moments later upped the lead to 23-7.

Hope led by double digits four minutes into the game and the lead never dipped below 10. The Eagles did make a slight push to start the second quarter, when the deficit was 25-15, but Miera buried another 3, and Aaron’s three-point play ended that mini-run for Eldorado, which was down a couple of regulars to injuries on Monday.

“We came out here and we just had it in our minds that we were gonna win this game by a lot,” said Miera, who scored a varsity career high of 26 points. “We did what we needed to do to beat them.”

The lead was as many as 32 after Miera’s final 3-pointer of the game, 82-50 with three minutes left.

“I didn’t even start him (because I’ve) been mixing up the starting lineup with the different guards we have,” Murphy said. “I said to him, ‘You’re my point guard, you’re my leader, and you may not start but you’ll be in there at the end.’”

Murphy smiled.

“There’s a reason to the madness,” he said.

Aaron added 21 points for the Huskies, who are off the rest of the week. When they return, on Monday at 1 p.m., they’ll face four-time defending 5A state champion Volcano Vista in the opening round of Rio Rancho’s holiday event.

That will be Murphy’s first shot at 900 with the boys. Only one other boys coach has ever won as many as 900, and that is Ralph Tasker, who’s over 1,100.