PHOENIX — Kevin Thomas has only been at Goodyear Millennium High School for two years, but the Tigers head coach already has developed a tradition. Each March, he takes his championship ring, puts it in a ring box and hangs a piece of the state championship net on the side.
Trayanna Crisp, the star guard who returned from PHH Prep this season to pursue her third title, has a designated spot for her memorabilia, too. This Christmas, her dad bought her a case to keep her rings and nets in.
Such is life at Millennium, which won its fourth straight Class 5A girls high school basketball state championship Tuesday night, beating Flowing Wells 46-28.
“I’m an emotional person, but I don’t express it well,” Thomas said. “I’m a little bit numb at the moment and a little overwhelmed but thrilled to be a part of it.”
In the regular season, the Tigers experienced uncharacteristic struggles, finishing at 17-9. As such, they earned the No. 3 seed, the underdog against Flowing Wells, which came into Tuesday at 29-1, with the state’s top seed in the 5A conference.
From the start, the play on the court at Arizona Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum portrayed a different story.
Flowing Wells scored the night’s first five points, before Millennium responded with a 10-0 run to close the first quarter. In that run, the Tigers established the tone for the night, forcing Flowing Wells into tough contested shots.
And, even when the Caballeros got their typical looks at the rim, shots weren’t falling. On the night, juniors Navine Mallon and Leamsi Acuna — their top two scorers — combined to shoot 6 for 25.
“We wanted to make sure that Acuna didn’t get space,” Thomas said. “We know that (Mallon), between the two of them, trying to prevent them from being able to create. If they can’t create and we force other players to have to do that, we can have some success. So I thought it was a formula that panned out over time.”
Flowing Wells’ Leamsi Acuna dribbles around teammate Sydney Lomeli-Capen’s screen Tuesday. The Caballeros lost 46-28 in the championship game.
Still, Millennium entered halftime up just 10 points. In last week’s semifinal against Peoria Sunrise Mountain, the Tigers gave up a 24-4 run out of halftime. To Thomas, it was the culmination of a worrying trend that had developed over the past month.
So, on Tuesday, his halftime message was simple.
“We’re known to be a team where we let teams come back,” Crisp said. “And (Thomas said), we need to embrace the fact that it’s 0-0 at halftime. Same score. We gotta go out with the same vengeance that we did the first quarter.”
The result? A third quarter in which Flowing Wells didn’t score a single point as Millennium stretched its lead to 38-15.
Six minutes into the Caballeros’ futile quarter, frustration boiled over. Acuna crossed a player over, driving into the lane in search of Flowing Wells’ first points when she was met by Crisp, who walled her up, wrestling the ball away and scoring a transition 3 on the other end.
Acuna watched from the floor before getting up and shoulder checking Millennium’s Elli Guiney off ball on the next possession. Although the potential technical foul went uncalled, it summed up Flowing Wells’ frustration.
On the other sideline, the only emotion was joy.
