Late in the third quarter of Pueblo High School's girls basketball game against Desert View on Jan. 8, a Pueblo assistant coach, scorebook in hand, tapped head coachΒ Izzy Galindo on the shoulder and told him that senior guard America Cazares had already scored 45 points.
Galindo was about to empty the bench and play his reserves in the fourth quarter. The Warriors led by about 45.
"At that point, I decided to leave her in and see what she could finish with," Galindo says. "She has a chance to score 3,000 points in her career and I told the other coaches that if she's scoring big I'm going to leave her in and we'll see where she ends up."
Cazares finished with 62 points, the most ever in Tucson prep basketball history by a boys or girls player. Pueblo won 81-23.
Incredibly, Cazares scored 64 Friday night, refreshing her record in a wild 121-22 game at Buena. What makes it more head-turning is that she didn't attempt a free throw. She made 27 of 41 shots from the field.
Here's some perspective. Over the last 50 years, Tucson boys and girls basketball teams have played roughly 1,200 games per year. That's about 62,000 games, which is almost poetry when linked to Cazares' 62-point game.
Pueblo Warriors' America Cazares shoots the ball over Catalina Foothills Ally Rosas during the MLK Coaches for Charity Classic at McKale Center, Jan. 20, 2025.
This didn't come as a surprise. As a sophomore in 2024, Cazares became the highest-scoring Tucsonan prep basketball player, boy or girl, with a 59-point burst against Palo Verde, breaking the city record (boys/girls) of 58 set by Pueblo's Aromeo Grigsby against CDO in 1997.
Galindo isn't new to record-breaking scorers. His 2016 star, Alicia Reyes, scored a then-girls city record of 57 against Cholla. Galindo has been a force since taking over a sub-optimal Pueblo program 13 years ago; he has now won 254 games and has posted records of 30-3, 26-2, 25-5 (twice) and 24-6. The Warriors are currently ranked No. 4 in the state 5A rankings.
He is driven to win the Big One; his 2023 team reached the state championship game before losing a 68-65 tear-jerker to Flagstaff.
"I stress to America that I'm OK with personal goals but it's got to be within the team goals, trying for that trophy that comes with the state championship," Galindo says. "If I can help her get (3,000 points), I'm going to do so."
No girls basketball player has ever scored 3,000 points in Arizona prep history. Catalina Foothills' state MVP Julie Brase Hairgrove, now an assistant coach at Arizona, scored a still-standing state-record 2,913 points. After Friday's game against Buena, Cazares had 2,577, 336 behind Hairgrove.( Julie had a single-game high of 47 in Foothills' 1997 run to the state championship.)
Is that within Cazares' reach?
Pueblo has eight regular-season games remaining and probably two or three playoff games. That means Cazares would need to average about 30 points per game. Her current average is a state-high 32.4. It should be close.
As for whether Galindo did the right thing by leaving Cazares in during a fourth quarter in which the Warriors led by 50 or more points, consider this: When Tucson High's Ray Kosanke, a 6-foot, 9-inch center who would go on to start at Stanford, set the then-city scoring record of 46 points in THS' undefeated state championship season of 1962, Kosanke played most of the fourth quarter in an 88-36 blowout of Amphitheater.
The Daily Star referred to it as "perhaps the greatest feat ever by an Old Pueblo cager."
Cazares is writing the next chapter in "greatest feats ever by an Old Pueblo cager."
