The Pagosa Springs High School Pirate basketball team drew its season to a close in the first round of the state playoffs on March 7 with a loss to the No. 3 Aspen Skiers.
The Pirates entered the game as the No. 30 team in the 4A boys’ basketball bracket.
“Aspen was a pretty decent size, pretty athletic, pretty physical type team,” coach Wes Lewis said.
The Skiers outscored the Pirates 13-7 in the first quarter and led 24-12 by halftime.
“I felt like we did a pretty good job defensively against them. ... It was kind of a seesaw game for the first half. They kinda made a little run at the end of the first half and they actually hit a buzzer 3 to go up 12,” he said. “I felt like it could have been a lot closer than that.”
The Skiers outscored Pagosa 14-9 in the third.
Lewis recalled the Pirates came out in the third and “made a little run, got a couple stops, got a couple scores” and forced Aspen to call a timeout.
Aspen responded and the Pirates missed some easy opportunities, he added.
The Skiers outscored Pagosa 14-9 in the fourth to walk away with the 52-30 win and advance to the Sweet 16 round.
“I just felt like we were good defensively, but we struggled a little bit offensively,” he said, adding the team wasn’t able to finish shots or make jumpers. “We kind of talked about going into the game that we were gonna have to do three things to give ourselves a chance to be successful, and that was ... we’re going to have to finish our inside bunnies, limit our turnovers and then ... hit some outside shots.”
He noted that while the team’s turnover count wasn’t bad, most of the team was unable to hit outside shots and the team “left some points in the paint.”
He added, “It was just one of them games. It didn’t happen for us.”
Colt Lewis picked up 18 points in his final game as a Pirate, which included a pair of 3-pointers. He added two assists and three steals.
Ty Richey put up six points, pulled down one rebound and picked up a steal.
Jaxten Scheil added four points in his final game, and had one rebound and two blocks.
Seth Zeiglar added two to the team’s total in his final matchup as a Pirate. He led the team in rebounding with eight, as well as logging a steal.
Creede Dozier and Jayton Ross each added two assists, and Ross stole the ball twice.
The team made eight of 10 attempts from the free-throw line and turned the ball over 12 times.
The Skiers went on to lose to No. 19 Timnath in the Sweet 16 round the following day.
Only four of the top eight seeds advanced to the Great 8 round that began Wednesday.
The Great 8 comprises No. 1 Kent Denver versus No. 25 The Academy, No. 5 Fort Lupton versus No. 4 Prospect Ridge Academy, No. 15 University versus No. 10 Colorado Academy and No. 6 Coal Ridge versus No. 19 Timnath.
The Pirates ended the season with a 7-17 overall record and fourth in the Intermountain League with a league record of 4-8.
“We were all a little disappointed in how our year went, and I know we all had higher expectations and desires, and, for a lot of different reasons, we didn’t have the year that we had hoped to have,” Wes Lewis said. “But, I was proud of them for comin’ to practice every day, workin’ hard, having a positive attitude, having a desire to improve.”
He added the athletes had good attitudes and were coachable.
“It’s hard. I mean, it’s definitely hard when you don’t have the year you hoped to have and you think you’ve got the pieces to the puzzle to make a pretty decent year out of it, and things didn’t happen for us,” Wes Lewis said, adding a lot of factors led to how the season turned out.
Wes Lewis noted, in addition to the positives he saw with the team on a daily basis, he saw improvement in some of the team’s players.
He also noted that the team is not immune to what almost every team goes through almost every year in losing three good seniors: Colt Lewis, Zeigler and Scheil.
But, the coach noted, “I feel really excited for what the guys are going to get done next year.”
randi@pagosasun.com
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