Tucson High opened up the winter season with a 68-46 win at Mountain View Marana late Friday night. The loss dropped the Mountain Lions to 1-1 on the year after the team beat Maricopa 47-42 the night before.

Mountain View opened up an early 8-3 lead, sparked by 3-pointers from Johnny Simmons and Jared Herring, but the Mountain Lions were held scoreless in the final four minutes until Simmons hit a bucket with 5.6 seconds left in the quarter. The Badgers closed out the opening quarter on 17-5 run to take a 20-13 lead.

The second quarter played out quickly with minimal scoring by both squads but Tucson went into the half up 29-19. Isaac Martinez nailed four 3-pointers in the third quarter to push the Badgers’ lead to 52-32 and that all the cushion the team would need the rest of the way.

Martinez and Christian Caldwell scored 12 points each to lead the Badgers and Francisco Miranda added 10. Herring led Mountain View with a team-high 11 points and Simmons added 7.

The Badgers made the state playoffs last year for the first time since 2016 and the team is under the guidance of first-year head coach Eric Langford who was an all-region selection for the Badgers in 1991. Langford went on to play for Eastern Arizona and GCU.

Langford lost the services of the top three scorers from last year with Mark Hunter (15.5 points per game) graduating and Kaden Luna (14.2) and Yahir Garcia (13.7) switching to a travel team for their senior seasons. The top 16 teams in the 6A Conference according to power-points will qualify for the state playoffs this year.

Former Marana standout and longtime Mountain View coach Corey Duck lost all-region players Cameron Cotton, Jayce Canovali, Ryan Brown and Isaiah Sparkman to graduation but his current roster is loaded with juniors so expect a very experienced team for the next two years. Like the 6A Conference, only the top 16 ranked teams will make the 5A state playoffs.

The Badgers will travel to play Maricopa (1-3) on Tuesday, Feb. 2 and the Mountain Lions will host Desert View (0-0) on the same night.

(Andy Morales/AZPreps365)