With her team trailing Dolores by eight points at the end of the first quarter, Mancos senior Brittney Peacock made a decision to make her final home game a memorable one.
From then on, it was all Lady Jays, as Mancos poured it on despite Dolores’s best efforts in route to a 52-32 victory at the Mancos Performance Center on Feb. 17.
“This was the perfect way to end it,” said Peacock, who scored a career-high 32-points. “This is what I wanted and I think my teammates can relate to that. I’m very blessed and I owe it all to the guy up there.”
The Mancos senior’s special night began in earnest two minutes into the second quarter when she drained her first three-pointer of the contest from the left wing to tie the game, 13-13.
Roughly one minute later, Peacock banked in a runner from just inside the free throw line to put Mancos ahead 15-13, and not long after, drilled her second three-pointer of the quarter after catching a pretty pass from freshman Kasey Wallace to put Mancos ahead 19-13.
By the time the second quarter ended, Peacock had amassed 16-points over a period of roughly seven minutes and Mancos led 27-13.
While Dolores players headed to the locker room with their heads down and dejected expressions on their faces, Mancos players high-fived one another and patted their star senior on the back.
“After the first quarter, we realized that our best senior is leaving next year, so we had to give it our all,” said Lady Jays junior Ashley Cole. “She’s the number one (player), so we had to give her our number one (effort).”
Showing that her second-quarter explosion was more than an epiphany, Peacock scored another three-pointer five seconds into the third quarter to give Mancos a 30-13 lead.
Two minutes later, Peacock took a seat on the bench for the remainder of the third quarter and watched teammates extend the Lady Jays lead to 37-19 with on an old-fashioned three-point play by Cole with 55 seconds left in the third quarter.
The Lady Jays sizable lead rendered the remainder of the contest moot as both teams traded baskets throughout a back-and-forth fourth quarter that ended with Mancos leading by 20 points and the home crowd on its feet screaming its approval.
Cole finished second for the Jays in scoring with 12 points, while Dolores junior Sierra Schwartz led her team in scoring with 10. Senior Madi Archuleta and sophomore Codi Archuleta scored six points each for the Lady Bears.
With their regular seasons now complete, Dolores (4-15 overall, 3-10 in SJBL) will travel to take on Telluride (5-14 overall, 4-9 in SJBL) at 6 p.m. on Feb. 21 in the pigtail round of the Class 2A District 1 Tournament.
Mancos (5-13 overall, 3-10 in the SJBL) will travel to take on Ridgway (6-12 overall, 5-7 in SJBL) at 6 p.m. on Feb. 21 in the pigtail round of the Class 2A District 1 Tournament.