The Pahrump Valley girls’ basketball season was cut short on Friday afternoon when they were defeated by the Fernley Vaqueros 55-47 in the first round of the Nevada 3A state tournament.
This was the third state tournament appearance in a row for head coach Bob Hopkins and the Lady Trojans and it was the second time in those three trips that Pahrump Valley has faced the Vaqueros in the first round.
Hopkins led the Lady Trojans to a 22-4 regular season record and the No. 1 seed in the Southern Regional tournament.
Pahrump Valley fell short at home against the Moapa Valley Pirates in the regional championship for the third season in a row, so they had a chip on their shoulder going into the state tournament.
The Lady Trojans showed a lot of resilience and fight in their game on Friday after having to come back from a halftime deficit to force overtime against the Vaqueros.
Despite holding a 2-point lead after the first quarter, Pahrump trailed 24-18 at halftime after a subpar second quarter. Fernley outscored them 17-9 in the second quarter.
Junior guard Avery Moore led the Trojans with her first career double-double. She finished the day with a team-high 13 points, tying her career high, on 5-of-9 shooting and grabbed 11 rebounds.
Moore also had four assists and three steals to round out her stat line.
The Lady Trojans played a hard-fought second half, outscoring Fernley 29-23. Pahrump held the Lady Vaqueros to just nine points in the fourth quarter, allowing the Trojans to come back to tie the game and force overtime.
Junior guard Paris Coleman made the game-tying layup from an inbound pass by Moore as the fourth quarter clock expired to tie the game at 47. She finished the game with 11 points and four rebounds.
Pahrump seemed to have used all of their steam in the fourth quarter as they were shut out 8-0 in the overtime frame.
Fernley would move on to the state championship game against the Lowry Buckaroos on Saturday. Lowry would get the 58-53 victory for their second consecutive state title.
Trojans’ senior guard Adryanna Avena finished the game with nine points, four rebounds and a team-high seven steals.
Avena finished her senior year with 224 points, 97 assists and 88 steals. In her 53-game career at Pahrump Valley, she scored 404 points, dished out 149 assists and had 153 steals.
The team’s leading scorer, Kailani Martinez, finished the playoff game with seven points and three assists. She ended her junior season with 304 points, averaging 10.1 points per game, and grabbed 143 rebounds.
The Trojans will be losing four of their players who are seniors after this season. Among those four players, one was a starter this season in Avena, and one was the first player off the bench in Peyton Odegard.
On the plus side, they’ll be hanging on to four of their top five scorers and their top four rebounders who are all juniors this season.
If all four of his juniors in the starting line up from this season return in their senior year, Hopkins will only need to replace one person from his starting lineup next year. The team will be headed by a very experienced group of girls who will be seniors for the 2023-24 season.
Now that the basketball season is finished, Hopkins will set his focus on the boys’ golf season for the Trojans.
Their first event will be on Wednesday, March 8 when they head to Needles, California. The golf round will begin at 11 a.m.
Contact sports writer/editor Danny Smyth at dsmyth@pvtimes.com. Follow @the_dannysmyth on Twitter.