BHS Girls Basketball: Aztecs eye Hawks, DSL title

BARSTOW • And it all comes down to this.

The Barstow and Silverado High School girls basketball teams will face off at 6:30 tonight at the Don Bilsborough Gymnasium for the third and final time this season and with the winner likely capturing the Desert Sky League title.

This has been the collision course both teams have been headed for since before the season and seemingly for the last four years. The Hawks and Aztecs (17-2, 8-1 DSL) have lost to each other once but otherwise swept through the rest of the DSL.

“It’s kind of cool it came down to this,” Barstow coach Derrick Delton said. “This was the prediction last year when we had our league meeting that we were going to be ready and Silverado was going to be ready. It’s really cool to see that both teams stepped up and took care of what they needed to do.”

The Aztecs have always looked up to Silverado, Delton said. Rightful so. The Hawks have owned Barstow and the rest of the DSL throughout the last four years. The Aztecs, who have never won a DSL title, are 2-6 against Silverado during that period. A win will mean more than a DSL title, Barstow senior Stefanie Dado said.

“Just beating Silverado (is our priority),” Dado said. “The title is nice, but we’ve lost to them my freshman, my sophomore, my junior year.”

The Hawks (14-4, 8-1 DSL) set the bar and the Aztecs have been working to narrow or erase the gap between the two teams. On occasion, they’ve done just that  as their 70-67 overtime win against Silverado showed earlier this season. However, the Hawks got their revenge in a 62-51 win in the team’s second meeting.

Tonight’s the opportunity the Aztecs, who rose to a tie for No. 3 ranking in this week’s CIF-Southern Section Division III-A poll, have waited for four years. When Delton started building with Nisha Barrett, Dado and Cherrelle Green four years ago, the Aztecs were thoroughly outplayed by Silverado. The Hawks’ press caused turnover after turnover and Barstow was outscored by 66 points in two games during their freshman season.

During their sophomore, junior and senior seasons the Aztecs have at least caught up a little bit to Silverado.

“Our mission was to play at the level of Silverado,” Delton said. “Over the last two years, we’ve been near that level.”

However, Barstow enters its game against the Hawks at less than full strength for the second straight time. Dado sat out the previous matchup with a twisted ankle. That ankle is still giving the guard problems, and the Aztecs have added other injuries to that. Barrett hurt her knee when she landed awkwardly against Burroughs on Thursday and junior Megan Peacock hurt her wrist in the same game.

“Last time we played Silverado, I sat out,” Dado said. “Seeing the team get beat up like that, I’m ready for this one. It’s the last time I get to play them so you just put it all on the court. I’m confident. We have a good chance. We are ready.”

Barrett, the Aztecs leading scorer who averages more than 17 points per game, rested during the weekend but participated in full practice Monday.

“She’ll play as hard as she can for as long as she can,” Delton said. “It’s mostly sore. I think once see gets into the emotion of the game, gets it warmed, gets it loose, she’ll be fine.”

Still, this year’s in the making matchup won’t wait up for the Aztecs healthy or otherwise.

“It’s frustrating,” Delton said, “When you play Silverado you want to be 100 percent because you need to play your best game to do something that’s unprecedented for our school. But we’ll take what we can get. We’ll go out there and play as hard as we can for as long as we can and see what the score says at the end.”

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(760) 256-4124 or
mpeters@desertdispatch.com