DENVER – While the angle wasn’t ideal, Alexcia Oaxaca found the glass and her heat check 3-pointer dropped.
The senior guard scored 19 points, hit 5 of 7 3-point attempts and pulled down seven rebounds to lead No. 4 Holy Family to a 52-46 win over No. 3 Kenver in the Class 4A girls basketball state title game on Saturday morning at Denver Coliseum.
Priya Lucas added 18 points and seven rebounds for the Tigers (20-8) who claimed their 8th state championship and first since 2023. Holy Family played without senior Enyiah Contreraz who was sidelined for the playoffs by a knee injury. The Tigers are tied with Mullen for the second most girls state titles all time, one behind Eads.
Austin Duncan led Kent Denver (20-8) with a game-high 27 points and nine rebounds.
“Some of the shots that I took I was sure weren’t going to go in,” Oaxaca said. “I thought they would miss way too long and even called a few that it wasn’t going in. But they went right in.”
When Oaxaca banked in a corner three for a 29-26 lead with 6:13 left in the third quarter it kicked off a game-defining run. Priya Lucas followed with a pair of buckets for a 7-0 scoring surge as the Tigers took a 33-26 lead.
“St. Patrick’s Day is coming up and I’m wearing my pin,” Holy Family coach Mike Quintana said. “So I’ll take the luck. You need a little luck to get here. You need a lot of hard work. We’ve been struggling with injuries all year but if we’ve learned anything all year it’s to be present.”
A Duncan feet throw momentarily stemmed the tide but Lorena Cover canned a wing trey to cap a 10-1 run that gave Holy Family a 36-27 advantage. Lucas found a mismatch in the post, called for the ball and stretched the Holy Family lead to double digits for the first time at 38-28.
“I saw an opportunity to take advantage of,” Lucas said. “My teammates listen and understand. Give the ball to the person that has the opportunity or is hot. We changed from a selfish mindset to a do it for each other approach. We want to make one more pass. We all have our strengths and know our roles. It’s not about us it’s about the team.”
The Tigers closed the third quarter on a 14-5 run and took a 43-31 lead into the fourth quarter.
“We struggled to work together at the beginning,” Oaxaca said. “But over time that’s what we figured out, over the course of the season, and led us to the state championship.”
After a slow start, Oaxaca got Holy Family on the board with her first three at the 4:37 mark to cut the KDS lead to 4-3. Her second trey of the quarter gave the Tigers their first lead at 8-7 at the 1:38 mark. The Taft College commit canned two more threes in the second quarter as she took advantage of gaps in the Kent Denver 1-3-1 zone. Her 12 first-half points all came on shots from beyond the arc.
“It felt really good,” Oaxaca said. “We felt like we were in the zone and no one was stopping us.”
In a tightly contested opening seven minutes, London Barry snuck in a put-back bucket just before the buzzer, was fouled and hit the free throw for the three-point play to tie the game at 10 all as both teams headed to their benches.
Because Austin Duncan scored the Sun Devils first six points in the paint, Holy Family switched from man-to-man into a 2-3 zone at the start of the second quarter. The Tigers’ zone collapsed on her whenever she caught the ball near the basket.
But it only momentarily slowed down the Washburn recruit, who scored five straight Sun Devil points and tied the game at 22-22 with a short-range jumper. The Tigers took a 23-22 halftime lead.
The Sun Devils got a three from Kara Fitzpatrick with 1:12 remaining to cut the Holy Family lead to 49-41. Oaxaca and Lucas iced the game with free throws down the stretch though as Holy Family knocked off Kent Devner for the 13th time in 14 games since 2007.
