Riding a huge first half, Sandia's boys clinch 2-5A title

SANTA FE — Sandia. Outright.

The District 2-5A boys basketball season held a juicy possibility of a three-way tie by the time everything had played out Friday night, the penultimate night of New Mexico’s regular season, with Sandia, Santa Fe and La Cueva maybe all jointly sharing first place.

Second-ranked Sandia rendered any tiebreaking scenarios moot, devastating eighth-ranked Santa Fe with its shooting and athleticism in a marvelously explosive first half, as the Matadors cruised to a not-nearly-as-close-as-it-looked 80-65 road victory over Santa Fe at Toby Roybal Memorial Gymnasium that solidified first place alone in 2-5A.

Sandia finished the regular season 23-3 — two losses to Volcano Vista, the third a double-overtime loss to La Cueva — and 9-1 in league play. The Matadors will host the 2-5A tournament championship game next Saturday.

The Bears finished second alone in district after they beat Manzano on Friday. La Cueva closed a game in front of third-place Santa Fe (18-8, 7-3).

“We’ve been playing the last four, five games, been playing well, getting off to good starts, and we knew we needed to match their urgency, because they wanted to win this,” Sandia coach Danny Brown said. “We were prepared, and each and every one of them stepped up, especially that first five.”

Sandia’s starting unit accounted for 70 of Sandia’s 80 points. Thomas Adams, a 6-foot-3 senior guard and one of 5A’s most underappreciated players, had a team-best 21 points. Isaiah Brown added 17, Zaire Ndyabagye 14, Gad Harris 12 and Mason Howell six.

First quarter 3s, two by Brown and a third by Ndyabagye, staked Sandia to a 19-10 lead. The Demons were never closer than six the rest of the game and they were behind by as many as 30 late in the third quarter.

“Coach told us to come out right,” Ndyabagye said. “He told us we needed to put a number up there. … (And) when one guy gets hot like Zay Brown, he got us started with those two 3s.”

The Matadors had a grand time during a special first half in which they put up 48 points, and probably left 10 more on the floor with missed layups. Adams buried a couple of 3-pointers in that first half, plus those two by Brown, a freshman. Another frosh, Harris, hit twice from distance.

Harris’ two 3s came one on top of the other during a late surge by the Matadors, who went on a 14-3 run to end the first half, which ended with Sandia leading 48-27.

But all of the Sandia sharpshooting took a back seat to what proved to be one of the most spectacular dunks of the prep season.

On a 2-on-1 break with Adams, 6-foot-7 senior wing Ndyabagye took a feed from Adams and delivered a savage, filthy tomahawk dunk right on top of a Santa Fe defender’s head.

“I had one against Atrisco (that was close), but not as good as that one,” he said, smiling.

Said coach Brown: “He can dunk. But I haven’t even seen him dunk after practice when we’re messing around like that, let alone ON somebody.”

This first half was important to Sandia, if only because in the first meeting, Santa Fe trailed only 36-33 at halftime.

The Matadors never let the Demons breathe in the rematch.

“We shot it well early, and that kind of got us going,” he said. “We’re hard to guard when the ball flows and moves. You have to guard … four guys on our perimeter, and that’s hard to do.”

Sandia High School boys take on Santa Fe High: Photos