EDINBURG — The Edinburg High Bobcats and Harlingen High Cardinals did not disappoint in their highly-anticipated Class 6A regional quarterfinal matchup Thursday at Bert Ogden Arena.
In the first high school girls basketball game ever played at Bert Ogden, the Cardinals and Bobcats — the first and second-ranked teams in The Monitor’s Top 10 poll, respectively — traded blows throughout a back-and-forth game that ended in dramatic fashion and featured eight lead changes.
The teams traded leads three times during the final 60 seconds of the fourth quarter.
With 7.5 seconds left on the clock, though, Cardinals junior point guard Avery Hinojosa hit senior forward Callie Cervantes on the baseline.
Cervantes dribbled past a defender and drained a game-winning layup to beat the buzzer and lift Harlingen over Edinburg, 55-54, and into the Class 6A Sweet 16 for the first time in eight years.
“It feels amazing. They thought we were the underdogs, but we proved them wrong because now we’re in the Sweet 16. We kept fighting and never gave up,” said Hinojosa, who finished with a team-high 13 points and three assists. “I saw Callie on the backside and I knew I could count on her to make it, so I gave her a good pass and she finished.”
“This is what we wanted: to give an opportunity to Valley basketball in the third round,” Edinburg High head coach John David Salinas said. “Win or lose on our part, I thought our girls played well. … They got us with that last play. Kudos to them. They made a play when they needed to.”
The Bobcats started fast during the first quarter and looked poised to run away with the game early after a 9-0 run to begin the contest.
The Cardinals, however, buckled down midway through the opening quarter and blitzed Edinburg with a full-court press and stifling pressure defense.
That threw the Bobcats’ offense out of sync and allowed Harlingen to claw back into the game before taking a 24-19 advantage into halftime.
“It takes a lot of heart and guts. You’ve got to have a lot of heart to play full-court pressure defense all the time,” Harlingen head coach Ashley Monciviaz said. “They’ve done it all season and that’s how they do it, with heart.”
“We live and die by our defense,” senior guard Alyssa Salas said. “Everyone gave all the effort they had and it worked.”
A quick 8-2 run put Edinburg back ahead to begin the third quarter as senior guards A’nnika Saenz and Daysha Tijerina caught fire offensively.
Saenz, a UTRGV signee, took charge as the Bobcats’ floor general and finished with 11 points, four rebounds and three assists. Tijerina, meanwhile, was virtually unstoppable.
Tijerina tallied a game-high 24 points on 50% shooting from the floor and behind the 3-point arc to go with nine rebounds.
The Bobcats’ senior was sidelined early during the fourth quarter with leg cramps, but came back onto the floor to give Edinburg a one-point lead with 7.5 seconds to play on a drive to the rim through traffic.
“That’s senior leadership,” Salinas said. “They gave it all that they could and they left it all on the floor. They have nothing to hang their heads about.”
The fourth quarter belonged to the Cardinals, however, who trailed by three points with 60 seconds left in the game.
Sophomore center Julie Bryant — who finished with a 12-point, 12-rebound double-double — stole a tipped inbounds pass and laid in a finger roll from the free-throw line to make it a one-point game.
On the next possession, sophomore point guard Rose Zapata poked the ball away and lobbed it upcourt to Hinojosa, who finished off a transition layup to put Harlingen on top 53-52 with 20 seconds to go.
That’s when Tijerina answered back for Edinburg and Harlingen sealed its nail-biting victory at the buzzer.
“We kept driving to the hole because we knew they were in foul trouble. That put us at the line and we just knew we couldn’t give up and kept fighting,” Hinojosa said. “It feels amazing and we’re not done yet.”
“We just stayed as a team,” Monciviaz said. “No matter what we go through, we have to push through adversity. We’ve gone through a lot since last year in the spring, so that’s been our motto: stay together and get through it.”
The loss ends Edinburg’s season in the regional quarterfinals and drops the Bobcats to 21-5 on the season after making their third consecutive trip to the third round.
The Bobcats’ trio of seniors — Julissah Santa Maria, Saenz and Tijerina — end their high school careers with the most postseason appearances (13) of any active players in the Rio Grande Valley.
“It’s hard to see them go done like that when they’re seconds away from getting another playoff win, but it is what it is,” Salinas said. “They’re great kids.”
The victory elevates Harlingen to 23-2 on the season and extends the team’s winning streak to 18.
The Cardinals, who entered the night as the seventh-ranked Class 6A team in the state according to the latest Texas Girls Coaches Association poll, will face the fourth-ranked Converse Judson Rockets in the regional semifinals this weekend at a time, date and place still to be determined.
“We’ve been talking about this since we were little,” Salas said. “And to finally make history and go to the Sweet 16, it’s amazing.”
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Twitter: @ByAndyMcCulloch
