Volcano Vista girls have not gone anywhere; Hawks capture metro title

The words sounded extremely odd, especially for a girls basketball program with this type of pedigree.

“I think this really sets us up to put us back on the market,” Mila Espinoza said.

This implies, more or less, that the Volcano Vista Hawks, who have played in four consecutive state championship games, had somehow left the market.

Of course, the Hawks had — and have — done no such thing.

And Volcano Vista looks plenty healthy.

Espinoza’s short, off-balance bucket off the glass broke a tie with 51 seconds left, and the fifth-ranked Hawks went on to win the Albuquerque Metro Championships, 46-41 over No. 4 La Cueva on Saturday night at Highland.

The win capped a sweep for Volcano Vista (11-5), with the boys having won the metro final — and the gargantuan trophy that goes with it — before the girls took the floor.

The Hawks stacked some high quality wins this week. They beat Class 4A’s No. 1 team, Gallup, handily in the quarterfinals. They handed 5A’s No. 2 Sandia its first loss in Friday’s semifinals.

And they endured a tough battle with La Cueva in the final.

“This is a great tournament,” Volcano Vista coach Lisa Villareal said. “It was like a preview of the state tournament, and everyone has got to show up every night and play.

“The girls were consistent, resilient, and they just played with a lot of heart and energy and effort, and I think they held it together with great composure at the end.”

It was the Hawks’ second victory this season over the Bears (10-3), but this one, unlike the first, was tight the entire way.

Volcano Vista had taken a 40-32 lead two minutes into the fourth quarter on a 10-0 run that included 3-pointers from Lilliana Duncan and Espinoza.

But the Bears, led by sophomore guard Jordyn Dyer, rallied. Dyer scored six straight; teammate Toni Lucero got a clean look at a corner 3 and buried it with 1:20 to go, and that make from Lucero tied the game at 41.

Espinoza appeared to be going to the ground when she launched a shot off that got a good bounce before going in for a 43-41 edge.

“I practice off-balance shots all the time,” she said.

“We really needed that … and she really came through for us. I’m proud of her,” Volcano Vista senior forward Taejhuan Hill said. Hill led the Hawks with 14 points.

And the vaunted Volcano Vista defense was superb all week; the metros are a grueling, four-games-in-five-days proposition.

But the Hawks held Gallup to 45 points. They held Sandia to 44, after giving up 82 to the Matadors at the start of the season. And they limited La Cueva to 41.

“Our press, that’s what made the difference,” Hill said. “Having energy on the press, getting deflections and steals and turnovers.”

Neither team had more than a five-point lead in the first half. Lucero hit a 3 in the waning seconds of the second quarter for La Cueva to tie the game 18-18 at halftime.

Third quarter? Much of the same. There were three lead changes, and La Cueva took a slim 31-30 lead into the fourth quarter.

“Man, we knew it wasn’t gonna be easy,” Hill said. “Even though we’ve already beaten them, we knew it would not be an easy game.”

Espinoza, who finished with nine points, said a tournament in Phoenix last month, where the Hawks lost three games in four days (but all by close margins), proved to be quite useful.

“After Arizona,” she said, “I feel like we came back and everyone doubted us because of our record. But it really did help us and we got a lot of competition and now we’re back.”

Eva Love scored 14 points to lead La Cueva. Dyer scored 11 of her 13 points in the second half.

Photos: Volcano Vista girls win Albuquerque Metro Basketball Championship