Opening its season at home against Aztec High School's junior varsity on Dec. 2, the Mancos High School boys basketball team stormed to an 84-46 victory.
"I thought we played pretty well all the way around," said Mancos head coach Rodney Cox. "We moved the ball really well. We are playing really unselfish basketball right now.
Leading the way for Mancos was junior Ro Paschal, whose size and athleticism proved to be too much for Aztec to handle. Paschal scored a game-high 21 points.
Also contributing on the low block were Brandon Hood-Farley and Daniel Christiansen, who scored 12 and nine points, respectively.
"Aztec didn't have an inside presence, which allowed Ro, Daniel and Brandon to come away with some inside buckets," said Cox.
On the perimeter, senior Nigel Henry paced the Bluejays with 15 points. Junior point guard Adrian Hernandez scored 11 points and senior point guard Jayden Peacock added six.
Mancos led 18-11 at the end of the first quarter and 41-21 at halftime. Despite his team's big win however, Cox said that the Bluejays are capable of playing even better.
"We need to clean some stuff up, especially with our defense," Cox said. "We're running some different things and the guys are still trying to figure out what I expect. It wasn't a bad effort though."
With their record now at 1-0 on the season, Mancos will travel to Meeker for the White River Electric Shootout Tournament, Dec. 11-13. The Bluejays opening game of the Tournament will be against Caprock Academy.
"I don't know anything about Caprock," said Cox. "We'll need to play well. We can always improve our defense."