Del Norte Tigers continue to knock ‘em down

Photo by Stephen Jiron Kade Glover (3) of Del Norte looks to get past Ignacio’s Keegan Shurman (2) while scanning the offense. Glover was hot from outside the arc sinking 5 three-pointers for a team leading 19 points.

DEL NORTE— The Tigers girls’ basketball team is one step closer to a perfect season. Thursday night Del Norte rolled right over the visiting Ignacio Bobcats 51-29. It was a game postponed from Tuesday.
Ignacio (11-5) held the number 17th spot in CHSAA’s unofficial RPI rankings. Del Norte (16-0) currently sits behind Limon in the number 2 spot. Despite a better record the Tigers are still ranked behind the Badgers by one hundredth of an index point on strength of schedule alone.
Del Norte wasted no time against the streaking Bobcats on Thursday night. The Tigers would engineer an unanswered scoring streak that would run into the second quarter and span 26 points. It wasn’t until Ebonee Gomez got something to drop that Ignacio would get on the board.
Del Norte senior Lacie Jones’ six points were the high for the second quarter. Jones finished her night second on the team in scoring with 10 points.
With a commanding lead early Del Norte became a little lax and it was the Bobcats that would post 7 of their own unanswered points in the second quarter.
Del Norte got back to work after the half with 13 third quarter points led by 10 from Kendra Parra. The Tigers’ prolific scorer has gone over 1,000 points in her high school career and is currently ranked third in the state in scoring with 24.1 points per game. Thursday night she led the team in scoring by adding another 20 points.
With a 25 point lead entering the final 8 minutes of play the Tigers would pace the Bobcats all the way to when the reserves took the floor and beyond for a big 51-29 win.
The win keeps Del Norte on track for an undefeated season with their 16th in a row. Late in the season last year the Del Norte Tigers were looking rather unstoppable, they were 8-0 in their league and they put together a 13 game streak to close the regular season. Entering the district tournament the hits just kept on coming, the Tigers went undefeated through the district tournament and hosted their own regional tournament. The fifth ranked Holyoke Dragons would eliminate last year’s Tigers in the regional round.
This season, a decidedly soft final stretch will be reason enough for Del Norte to look to the past and self-motivate because regional and state games against high quality opponents still lie on the horizon.
Del Norte will finish the weekend hosting Sargent (7-8) and will go on the road to face South Park (5-7) next Friday before finishing the regular season on the road at Sanford (11-5) Feb. 16.