BY GREG SELBER
EDINBURG – It seemed appropriate that there was Steve Trevino, dribbling out the clock in the waning seconds here Friday night, putting the wraps on an impressive if deceptively difficult 71-57 victory over Harlingen. The senior Bobcat had played a prominent role in Edinburg’s win, which put the team in first place as the first half of District 31-5A season came to a close.
Trevino, a star on the football field for two seasons, came up big for the ‘Cats (7-0) as they won their 19th game overall, with a couple of huge hoops in a nip-and-tuck third period and six points in the fourth, when EHS scored the first 11 points after being down 51-50 entering the stretch run. His season-high 14 points, combined with 17 points and eight rebounds from gridiron teammate Stevie “Blue Eyes” Guerrero, sent the home side to the triumph in front of a packed house that was loving every minute of the non-stop action.
As for Harlingen (6-1, 19-7), it gave a fine effort, paced by yet another standout from the football season, muscular Mack Sanchez. He went off for 14 in the first half, blanketed Bobcat leader Aaron Olvera at the head of Coach Greg Yates’ trapping defensive plan, and made it a night to remember all the way around. The Cards ran out of gas after three excellent periods, and the 14-point loss, as is so often the case, was misleading; this was a dogfight from the outset.
For Trevino, the W was very satisfying, as he is finally beginning to get his basketball legs under him. An awesome big-play wide receiver for the Bobcats, he admits that as a kid, he thought basketball first, second, and third.
“It’s strange, because that’s all I cared about, I never even played football up into junior high,” said the chiseled senior wing. “I was always into basketball. Then I fell in love with football freshman year and began to concentrate on that 100 percent.”
Trevino will be the first one to say that with all the football work, including weights, his hoops career sort of flagged.
“It’s tough, because with basketball it’s a skills thing, and you have to practice constantly,” he explained. “I just didn’t get enough time to work with the basketball team and it showed. But sometimes you just have to step it up for your team and tonight I felt like I was in my rhythm from the start. This is a big win for us, now we have one up, we’ve beaten the other teams once, and we just have to keep it going.”
In order to keep it going Friday, the ‘Cats first had to get it going. With Olvera struggling against a physical Harlingen D that bumped and surrounded him every time he touched the ball, it fell to the supporting cast to come through.
As always, the EHS attack was triggered by defense and rebounding, with Guerrero and 6-foot-4 junior Marquis Holiday hitting the rack and starting the fast break that had only been intermittent through three. When the Runnin’ Bobcats run, forget about it.
From that 51-50 deficit, the Bobcats exploded as the fourth began, with Guerrero stealing one and Holiday following up a miss by Olvera on the break for free throws. Next, Holiday forced a turnover and Guerrero fed Trevino on the runout; the receiving star pulled up in the lane for two, and the run was on.
Holiday, an on-again, off-again post with superb quickness and flashes of All-Valley caliber play, came up with a block which Phillip De la Rosa fielded on the fly, hitting a streaking Olvera for a speeding layup, a 57-51 lead, and Card timeout.
Too late.
After Holiday scored out of the timeout, Olvera, who ended with 16 points, skied for a block on the next sequence and ran down to eventually net a three-pointer from the left elbow, making it 62-51, as the partisan Red and Blue crowd went bananas. Game, set, match to the club that is seeking its fourth straight district title.
“We didn’t play that well at the end, we let them get some offensive boards and play good defense,” said Sanchez, who averages 10 ppg but recently tossed in 30 against Pharr North. “This was the first time we used the trap against just one guy, we wanted to slow down that 42 guy [Olvera]. Our rotation was a little off because of that. But they have a good team, and 42 is pretty tough.”
It was a pretty tough night all around, as the Cards banged well inside behind rugged senior Alejandro Pallares (15 points, nine caroms). The football motif was in effect for the duration, with cornerback/guard Cesar Martinez drawing the ire of the EHS fans with a pair of hard fouls in the game’s final minutes.
“Yeah, football came in handy tonight,” chuckled Trevino, who gave as well as he got. Sanchez agreed, saying that it was an exciting game to play in, a match between football rivals who’ve entered a handful of bi-district wars against each other in the past, the last being 2005.
“It’s fun to go over to someone else’s gym and try to beat them,” he laughed. “Especially when you know they hate you!”
Harlingen Coach Yates, a hoops superstar for the Cards, Class of 1981, noted beforehand that the two teams have battled it out in multiple sports for decades, making Friday the latest installment of a long-running rivalry.
“I have told my team that to be the best, you have to beat the best, so here we are,” said Yates, whose Harlingen unit came in ranked third in the Valley, with the ‘Cats at No. 5. “I think right now Edinburg is the best, and we want to knock them off.”
LET’S GET IT STARTED
Harlingen obliterated the Bobcats in football this year, 39-0, on the way to a 12-win season that saw the Cards advance all the way to the AlamoDome before losing to eventual state finalist Austin Westlake. As the basketball version of the grudge match began, it was a bit more contested than that.
Olvera stole two right off the bat and assisted Cord Arriola on a layin, and it was 10-4 in a hurry. To counter, Pallares, resolute in taking the ball right at the Bobcats, heated up and the Cards rushed to within one.
But De la Rosa, working his way back into shape after a broken hand suffered in the offseason, nailed a pair of threes, one from each corner on back-to-back possessions, for a 17-10 Edinburg lead. Sanchez sailed a looping trifetca into the net near the end of the period but the ‘Cats led by four, 21-17 with Trevino making two free throws after a sweet feed from De la Rosa forced a foul.
Then came the first turning point of the night, as Olvera elevated to slap away a dipsy-doo drive try from Sanchez. If Valley observers know anything about the burly quarterback, it’s that he lives by the law of the jungle; you challenge him, and he gets with the program, feeling a slight against his dignity.
So it was that Harlingen’s senior QB/guard answered with an immediate three, and then got even with a block on Olvera; at the other end he jumped for a two-point runner to give his group its first lead, at 22-21.
But then his opposite number, Guerrero, came to the party, showing that the other quarterback in the house is also quick to balk at being put down.
After missing two chippies while fighting for offensive rebounds (EHS held a plus-8 margin in the board column Friday), Guerrero decided that the drive was called for, and he swooped in for a great one, avoiding the defense at the last second with a lean and midair adjustment for a 5-point lead at 31-26.
Three Bobcats jumped guard David Pryor and forced a Harlingen miscue, and later it was Holiday and Guerrero playing Patty Cake on the offensive glass, good for four rebounds and finally two free throws from Olvera, who’d grabbed the fifth offensive rebound on the play.
But Sanchez was not going to sit idly by as the ‘Cats pushed his team around down low. He came down and fired a three from way downtown and was fouled. Though he made just one of three charity tosses the call went against Guerrero, his third with 1:17 left in the half.
Edinburg went to the lockers up three at 36-33.
THE ‘CATS COME ON
After the break, it was a brawl, with Trevino and Guerrero making breakneck runs to the goal for lays but strapping senior Jesus Pedraza countering with six points to keep the Redbirds cranking. He hit two free throws for a 43-42 lead, but Trevino popped one in to retake the advantage. Sanchez, who finished with a team-high 16, converted in the lane but again it was Trevino with the answer from six feet away, 46-45 EHS.
Then spindly senior Josh Leal, who along with teammate Martinez is a definite starter on the All-Hair Team, came in to knock down a pair of pretty mid-range Js, giving the Cards that 1-point lead after three.
But Edinburg re-focused its defensive effort, Holiday and Guerrero owned the inside, and Olvera came alive in the fourth as the Bobcats outscored Harlingen to the tune of 21-6 to take the game going away.
Late in the night, as the locals gave it to the aggressive Martinez hard after what they assumed were two cheap shots (they were probably not), it became apparent that as Yates says, these two clubs have been fighting it out for generations.
“They did a good job in the fourth against us,” said the coach after the game, which as stated, concluded the first half of the 31-5A marathon with EHS a game up on its rival to the east. “But we can do the same thing to them when they come to our place.”
Indeed. It’s a date!
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