RIO RANCHO — Ever the studious teenager, Kaydence Riley is mixing academics with basketball.
The senior at Santa Fe Indian School is using her experience as a girls basketball player — and more importantly, her experience as a team leader for the Lady Braves — as her Senior Honors Project. Riley said it focuses on grit and the power of passion and perseverance.
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And what better use of the project than merging it into the team’s culture? It just might be the blueprint to a Class 3A championship.
While the Lady Braves used a stifling defense and balanced scoring attack in a dominating fashion to beat District 2-3A rival Las Vegas Robertson 53-27 in a 3A semifinal in the Rio Rancho Events Center, head coach Khadijha Jackson credited Riley’s project in inspiring the team to perhaps its best stretch of basketball this season.
The Lady Braves play No. 1 Navajo Prep at 3 p.m. Friday in The Pit.
“It really brought out the mentality, the self-confidence and the inner talk within ourselves,” Jackson said.
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Riley said the seed of her project came from researching about how people in other countries try to better themselves and be more resilient when facing adversity.
“It comes with self-talk, self-motivation, and having a good community around you,” Riley said. “I think that’s what I was just pushing for this year.”
While the process took some time, Jackson said the changes within the team slowly revealed themselves, but especially over the past two weeks.
No. 1 SFIS beat its three state tournament opponents — No. 15 New Mexico Military Institute, No. 7 Newcomb and the third-seeded Cardinals — by an average of 28.7 points.
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The changes also came in how the Lady Braves struck the opposition.
A team that loved to shoot 3-pointers turned over a new leaf and attacked the basket. The Lady Braves took 10 3-pointers, hitting only two of them. Conversely, they were 20-for-40 inside the arc, including a 7-for-13 start in the first quarter to stake themselves to a 19-8 lead.
Even the girl called “Tiny,” junior Aaliyah Valencia, played bigger than her 5-foot-2 stature. Of her nine shots, only one was a 3. She was 7-for-8 on the rest of them and all were within 5 feet of the basket.
Jackson said the coaches talked with players about what they saw on the court and how to adapt. That included showing the Lady Braves videos about shot selection, and they responded positively to that.
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“We always listen to what coach says,” Valencia said. “When we shoot 3s, there’s no one really out there to get the rebound. Once we start moving the ball, we have the open lane and open drives.”
That approach started almost from the opening tip, and it was senior Izreonia Harrison who led the way. She scored the first five points of the game as SFIS made its first three shots, which included a 3 by Lashae Atencio for an 8-0 lead.
On the other end, the Cardinals seemed stuck in cement, because player movement, much less ball movement, was nonexistent. Robertson turned the ball over 10 times in the first quarter and could not get the post duo of Devynne Jenkins and Elena Olivas into the flow of the offense.
“We weren’t active, weren’t moving,” Cardinals head coach Jose “Majic” Medina said. “In other games, we’re moving. The ball is moving, the posts are flashing, sealing down low, posting up in the block and skipping the ball to the shooters.
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“We didn’t do that today.”
The closest the Cardinals got to challenging the Lady Braves was when Payton Woolf knocked down a 3-ball with 1:48 left in the opening quarter for a 15-8 deficit. SFIS responded with a pair of Riley free throws and a Valencia driving layup for a 19-8 lead.
The Lady Braves pushed the lead to 28-11 with a 9-3 scoring run that was capped by a Toni Riley breakaway layup with 3:16 left in the second quarter.
As if Robertson needed more to worry about, SFIS dominated an area the Cardinals did in winning two of the previous four matchups between the schools — rebounding. Not only did the Lady Braves outrebound them 36-26, but they had 17 offensive rebounds, while Robertson had just eight.
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That was a lifeline the Cardinals used to control those wins, but when it mattered the most.
“We were talking about how we got to eliminate them getting anywhere near the board,” Jackson said. “That was a big discussion we had as well; just trying to keep them outside, beyond the paint.”
For Riley, she gets the chance to end her prep career where her freshman season ended — playing for a state title. The Lady Braves lost Tohatchi in a 46-24 laugher that was never close — much like how they handled Robertson in Riley’s senior year.
Riley said it will be a surreal moment, saying her career has come full circle. While she won’t say winning a state title is high on her list, she knows it’s a chance to put the cherry on top of a sterling career.
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“I just wanna end my season on a good note,” Riley said. “I think this is a team that can help me get to that goal. And that’s a goal for every season and every underclassman. We’re all sisters, and that bond is gonna get us that championship.”
Riley also might have created a playbook for future Lady Braves teams to follow.
