Yodice: The lesson is, it is the journey, as much as the results, that define the power of state basketball

Today we officially say our goodbyes to the state basketball tournament.

Let’s review:

CONGRATS: We first and foremost offer a hearty congratulations to the 10 state champions.

The No. 1 seeds had themselves a robust week, winning eight of 10 brackets. Those eight were joined by two 2-seed champions, the Santa Fe Indian girls and the Fort Sumner/House boys.

Mesa Vista’s girls were the only team to join the precious first-timers club, and oh, how the Trojans gained entry.

All five boys champions are recent winners, having won it all no later than 2024.

There were a couple of minor droughts on the girls side. Logan won state for the first time since 2013, while Santa Fe Indian won it all for the first time since 2011.

Robertson’s boys were the first double-digit seed to play in a final since Del Norte in 2022.

Unfortunately, the 10 state championship games were largely absent of compelling drama. Of the 10 finals, the Logan-Fort Sumner/House 1A boys game was, easily, the most competitive of the group. And we’ll throw in the fourth quarter of Mesa Vista-Tatum girls for good measure.

RUNNING UP THE SCORE: Highland’s boys were one of the most impressive groups on championship weekend as the Hornets topped Artesia in the 4A final.

This is the third title for hugely popular Hornets coach Justin Woody, who also led the program to blue trophies in 2024 and 2022.

Greg Brown of Volcano Vista now has seven championships as a coach and 10 overall if you include the three he won as a player with Albuquerque Academy.

He passed his father, Mike, along with Ron Geyer, on the all-time list of coaching championships. Greg now has seven, tied with Jim Hulsman. The only men ahead of Greg Brown on the list are Jim Murphy (16), Ralph Tasker (12) and Pete Shock (10).

I wrote two weeks ago, and will repeat here, and it deserves repeating, that my belief is that Greg Brown did as good a coaching job with this particular Volcano Vista team as he ever has done in his career.

This team lost five games. That is more than the four previous championship teams combined (four) at Volcano Vista.

AT THE TOP: At the end of Kirtland Central’s 4A girls triumph over Gallup on Friday night, Broncos coach Devon Manning walked to the end of the bench near the ramp and sat down away from the celebration on the floor for a reflective moment by himself.

“I feel I had a mental hurdle, particularly as a coach, going against Gallup,” Manning said. “To be on this side of the championship, just to ponder it … this one does mean a lot. It was taking in the moment.”

Manning was showered with love in the post-game celebration as the medals were handed out.

“It’s funny,” he said. “I told myself I was never gonna coach girls basketball, but for the opportunity to come home, and try to lead this program back to where it should be … I know the community doesn’t like me all the time, and that’s OK, I’m not there to make friends. But man, when you win, they love you.”

Manning also made a couple of self-deprecating remarks about how his team puts up with his demands, but a night like Friday, he said, validated the efforts.

“It’s the standard we have to live up to,” he said. “It’s not what I want, it’s what the program demands.”

HOLE IN THE GROUND: It’s easy to overlook the fact that the Pit, brick and mortar though it may be, is very much a living, breathing thing.

As such, it doles out moments of exaltation in a week like this one, like when Mesa Vista’s Aaliyah Boies drains a game-winning – championship winning – 3-pointer with 12,000 humans in the building and only a couple of seconds remaining in the Class 2A final. Rarely do you witness a go-ahead shot like that in the Pit on any day, let alone in a state final when the Pit is largely full, as it was at that moment.

That was, to me, the defining snapshot of the week. The ear-splitting reaction as Boies’ 3 sailed through the net was a shared moment for everyone in the building, except for Tatum’s fans.

The Pit is also an entity that dispenses pain and anguish in equal measure.

Almost none of you are privy to the interview room after games, where winning players and coaches, followed by losing players and coaches, come in for media obligations.

These are often tough scenes to watch, obviously for the players and coaches on the wrong end, as the reality of a shattered dream seeps into their bones.

So many coaches in this tournament coach a son or daughter – Texico boys coach Craig Cook had his tiny son sitting on the end of the bench, an incredibly sweet visual – but in truth, coaches usually think of all their players as surrogate sons and daughters.

Eric Orell of La Cueva, who coaches his son, spoke from the heart about his love for his players. He wasn’t thinking about basketball, only about the seniors that were leaving his program, and he was hurting. Danny Brown of Sandia, who also coaches his son,  struggled to find the right words after the Matadors lost an overtime game to Cleveland.

The sweetest moment I observed came from Kjani Anitielu of Farmington, after the Scorpions fell on Tuesday night to Volcano Vista.

Near the end of the session, Anitielu said, she said she had something to say. But she was fighting tears, and she couldn’t form the words. So she leaned over, cupped her hand over a teammate’s ear sitting next to her and whispered what she wanted her teammate to say on her behalf.

I don’t recall exactly what was said; the point was, here was a teenage girl at the end of her career, thinking about the conclusion of her high school journey, and being too emotionally shaken to speak.

The message is this: it’s the journey as much as the results that touches so many of these people most deeply.

This year’s journey is over. We’ll do it again in 51 weeks.

James Yodice covers prep sports for the Journal. You can reach him at jyodice@abqjournal.com or via X at @JamesDYodice.