DENVER — Losing a senior captain and leading scorer right before the postseason might spell doom for the most basketball teams, but not the Green Mountain Rams.
Senior Kantyn Pearson (16.4 points per game) suffered a season-ending knee injury in the Rams’ regular-season finale on Feb. 16 and had surgery this last week. The loss hasn’t derailed Green Mountain’s postseason run.
Green Mountain scored a 50-40 victory over Mead in the first of eight Class 5A girls and boys state quarterfinal games Saturday at the Denver Coliseum.
“They have putting this together the last three years,” Green Mountain coach Matteo Busnardo said after the Rams punched their second straight trip to the Final 4 of the girls basketball state tournament. “We are heavy with juniors and a few seniors. We have harped on it all year. They love each other and are resilience. They stick together. There is no quit.”
No. 2 Green Mountain overcame a double-digit deficit in the first half against No. 7 Mead. Green Mountain (25-1 record) rallied for its 23rd consecutive win behind juniors Addie Evans (17 points) and Grace Herrig (15 points).
Mead (19-7) held a 24-14 lead with 3 minutes to go in the second quarter after a bucket from senior Elena Gomez.
“We knew we weren’t playing our best basketball when we were down by 10 points,” Evans said. “We were letting them have their open shots and a great team like that is going to make open 3s. Once we figured out how to run our zone and close out on shots we were good.”
Gomez finished with 14 points, but only had one field goal in the second half. Freshman Kally Clark had a dozen points on three 3-pointers for the season-ending loss for the Mavericks.
