Kailani Martinez leads Lady Trojans in Gator Winter Classic

HENDERSON — The Pahrump Valley girls basketball team has called Green Valley High School home this week as they participated in the 2022 Gator Winter Classic.

The tournament featured 32 teams split into eight 4-team pools. Each school played two games against teams within their pools. Following the pool play, each team was seeded and advanced to the knockout stage of the tournament.

The knockout stage was single-elimination style, containing four 8-team brackets.

The Lady Trojans went 2-0 in their pool play.

They kicked off the tournament with a matchup against Lathrop High School. The Malamutes play in the 4A division in Fairbanks, Alaska, which is the top division in the state.

Lathrop is kicking off their season with this tournament. I talked with their coach for a couple of minutes on Wednesday and he mentioned that the team’s only game style action this season was a scrimmage with their cross-town rival.

Pahrump Valley struggled early in the game.

The Malamutes threw a full-court press defense at the Trojans, which seemed to have caught Pahrump a little off-guard.

The Trojans found themselves stuck without a dribble near a sideline multiple times with nowhere to go and hard to pass to teammates.

However, head coach Bob Hopkins was able to get his team settled down by the second quarter and the Trojans were able to start breaking the presses without getting trapped.

It was the Kailani Martinez show for much of the first half for the Lady Trojans.

She scored the teams first 10 points of the game before one of her teammates scored. Martinez finished with a game-high 17 points and two rebounds against the Malamutes.

Junior guard Paris Coleman had the most well-rounded game for either team. She finished with four points, 10 rebounds and six assists.

Coleman had a huge second half for the Trojans who needed to make a comeback after trailing 15-12 at halftime.

With a huge third quarter by Pahrump, the Trojans went into the final quarter with a 24-20 lead and had figured out how to shut down Lathrop.

Despite winning by just two points, 30-28, the Trojans had full control of the game at the end. The Malamutes hit a 3-point shot with less than a second to go while they were down five points.

In Wednesday’s game, the Trojans had a much easier task at hand. This time, they were facing off against the Yerington Lions of the 2A division in northern Nevada.

This time, it was Pahrump Valley who came out with a full-court press defense to start the game.

The Lions struggled mightily against the press defense, turning the ball over multiple times and struggling to even in-bound the ball a few times.

Pahrump started the game on a 12-0 run before the Lions were able to get a basket.

The Trojans would go into the locker room at halftime with a sizable 29-10 lead.

Coleman and Martinez were co-players of the game with 10 points apiece. Martinez also had seven rebounds and two assists, while Coleman finished with two rebounds.

Abbigail Ramos had a really good game against the Lions. She finished with six points and had two assists and eight rebounds.

The Lady Trojans would go on to defeat the Lions by a score of 50-18.

For finishing 2-0 in the pool play, Pahrump Valley was awarded the No. 2 seed from their group and were matched up against the Sunny Hills Lancers, the No. 1 seed from the “H” group, on Thursday afternoon.

The Lancers finished their pool play 2-0 with a 43-24 win over Basic High School and a 46-14 victory over Coral Academy.

Pahrump Valley was able to knock off the Lancers by a score of 37-28 to advance to the semifinal round of the silver bracket to take on the Torrance Tarters of Torrance, California.

The Tarters went 2-0 in the pool play and knocked off Sierra Vista in the first round of the knockout stage.

This game took place late Thursday night. If the Trojans were able to get past the Tarters, the win would set them up with a spot in the championship game to be played on Friday afternoon. They would play the winner of Dixie (Utah) and Needles (Calif.).

You can follow along with the results of the game to see if the Trojans moved on to the championship game by going to quickscores.com.

The championship game will tip off on Friday, Dec 30 at 3:30 p.m. at Green Valley High School.

Following the tournament, Pahrump Valley will have the next few days off before returning to action next Wednesday, Jan. 4.

Pahrump Valley will travel back to the Las Vegas valley to take on the Arbor View Aggies. The Aggies play in the 4A Mountain league and currently hold a record of 4-5 on the year.

That game will tip off at 6:30 p.m.

Contact sports writer/editor Danny Smyth at dsmyth@pvtimes.com. Follow @the_dannysmyth on Twitter.