FARMINGTON -- And then there was one.
Farmington and Huntsville came into a Tuesday, Jan. 22, contest at Cardinal Arena tied for the top standing among 4A-1 boys basketball teams.
The Cardinals emerged with a hard-fought, 61-52, victory over long-time rival Huntsville, whom they have not been in the same basketball league with for some time.
Farmington is now 16-6 overall and 7-0 in conference while the Eagles fell to 14-7, 6-1.
Huntsville scored the last five points of the first on Sean McCone's 3-pointer followed by his spin and pull-up jumper to lead 14-9.
"They're a good team. They do what they do really well. They make you play at their pace. They shot us out of our zone early, which makes us play different lineups," said Farmington coach Beau Thompson. "I thought Tony Mayo did a good job. We had to downsize a little bit to the post to where we could guard them. We were behind so much."
With Mayo seeing a lot of minutes in the second Farmington closed the gap to two points, trailing 22-20 at halftime.
"We knew they were good and that's a tough team to play on the road," said Huntsville coach Grant Myrick. "We were 6-0. They were 6-0. We thought we could slow (Will) Pridmore down and did a pretty good job in the first half, but (Valenzuela) is the one who really hurt us. Even when we were guarding him, he still drained them."
Pridmore had only 4 points in the first half, then became a factor with his passing. Passing out of the post, Pridmore found Danny Valenzuela for a spot-up trey giving Farmington its first lead in the second half, 25-24. The lead changed hands twice more after that before Farmington closed out the third on a 15-9 run.
"They all shot it well. I called timeout and said they aren't going to keep shooting it like that, but they did," Myrick said. They beat us. They really outplayed us in the second half."
McCone's three gave Huntsville its last lead, 29-28. Pridmore threw out of a double-team to Valenzuela for another 3-pointer, then followed that up with a 3-pointer of his own before driving and dishing to Valenzuela for yet another trey.
Thompson praised the play of Valenzuela, saying, "Danny Valenzuela played great tonight. He was very efficient, didn't miss many shots. He hit some real big shots in the game. He was probably offensively the difference especially until Pridmore kind of got it going late in the third, early in the fourth."
The 5-foot-8 senior guard scored 18 points, 12 of which came on four 3-pointers. Pridmore drew the defense when he put the ball on the floor and set up at least two of Valenzuela's open looks.
"He's doing a good job of distributing it. He's starting to get doubled a lot every game and he's doing a good job of finding the open man. Tonight we made some shots in the third quarter," Thompson said.
Farmington led 45-38 after three quarters and didn't allow Huntsville to get closer than five points in the fourth as the Cardinals went on to a 61-51 victory.
Marpin Bokbwij led the Eagles with 18 points, while McCone had 17 and Caleb Welchel had 12 points.
Pridmore and Valenzuela shared scoring honors for Farmington with 18 points apiece.
FARMINGTON 61, HUNTSVILLE 51
Huntsville^14^8^16^13^--^51
Farmington^9^11^25^16^--^61
Huntsville (14-7, 6-1): Marpin Bokbwij 18, Sean McCone 17, Beau Welchel 12, Kent Mayes 4.
Farmington (16-6, 7-0): Will Pridmore 18, Danny Valenzuela 18, Tony Mayo 9, Jalen Montez 6, Austin Shelley 4, Jayden Whitmore 4, Marquevon Watson 2.
Sports on 01/30/2019