But they made it count.
The Panthers fell to Montrose earlier this season, 61-47, but Saturday in Cortez, they were a different team.
“They’ve learned how to play basketball,” said head coach Mike Hall. They’ve learned how to pass it, how to be patient and how to not turn the ball over. Defensively, they’ve always been great, but they’ve offensively changed in that month.”
And on senior day, the Panthers (4-16) leaned on senior Luis Perry in a 61-52 win over the Montrose Indians (4-16).
M-CHS went inside to Perry, and the senior scored seven points to give the Panthers a 16-14 lead at the end of the first quarter.
But on the opening play of the second – after Perry scored on a dish by Aron Engel – Perry made contact with an opposing player, and suffered a gash over his right eye.
“It didn’t really affect me at all,” Perry said after the game. “The problem was that we couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. So I’d get it taped up and run back out there, and the refs would pull me back out. So I was losing a lot of minutes on the floor trying to get the bleeding stopped.”
The Panthers would be forced to play the rest of the second quarter without their leading scorer, but other players stepped up.
“We’ve got to look to Jasen (Engel) and Aron (Engel),” Hall said. “Daniel (Fernandez), obviously, he’s a serious threat with the ball, but Jasen and Aron Engel they’ve got to step up and score. And they did.”
While Jasen Engel played more of a facilitator role in the second, Aron knocked down a 3-pointer, and sophomore Daniel Fernandez pushed the Panthers’ offense forward with six consecutive points, and M-CHS went to the half with a 29-24 lead.
After re-entering the game in the third quarter, Perry banged inside and chased offensive rebounds, scoring six points in the quarter and the Panthers closed the third with a six-point lead.
“I think my adrenaline was going, and it didn’t seem to affect me,” Perry said of his injury.
In the fourth, the Panthers got scoring from six different sources to close out the 61-52 win.
Perry scored four in the fourth, Aron Engel led with five and Jasen Engel, Obed Simental, Austin Bayles and Fernandez all hit free throws down the stretch.
And after shooting 12-of-25 free throws last week against Durango, M-CHS went 13-of-18 from the line in the final eight minutes.
“They shot a lot better tonight,” Hall said laughing.
Saturday’s win came on the heels of another close loss, as the Panthers fell on Friday against Fruita Monument, 52-47.
With their regular season schedule complete, the Panthers must now wait to learn of their postseason fate.
There’s still a chance they’ll make the regional tournament, depending on the outcome of the final regular season games in the Western Slope league.
The uncertainty made the win on senior day even more special.
“You see the kids and they were a little choked up,” said Hall. “The parents, everybody, can feel the emotion out there.”
