Catalina Foothills defeated Queen Creek 73-56 Thursday night to advance to the second round of the Division II state playoffs. The win gave the Falcons 20 wins on the year which extended their 20-win streak to five years in a row and seven of the last eight.

The Bulldogs, on the other hand, have struggled over the last two years with only 11 wins last year and 14 this year. Still, longtime coach Troy Gibson was able to pull together a playoff team this winter despite missing his best player to an injury.

"We came a long way from the beginning of the year," Gibson explained. "The kids played pretty well towards the end of the season but we didn't play very well tonight. All credit goes to Foothills."

Braxton Smith led the Bulldogs in scoring and was a force on the boards last year but the junior missed this year due to a foot injury.

As mentioned before, the Falcons are used to postseason action but this year felt a bit different thanks to a 50-44 upset to Tucson in the Section IV championship game last Saturday. The loss not only gave the Badgers a playoff spot, it also prevented the Falcons from earning a first-round bye.  

Doug D'Amore (63-25) is in his third year at Catalina Foothills and he has reached 60 wins faster than any of his predecessors. He has a chance to collect the most wins in program history (78) next year but none could have been as sweet as the one he earned Thursday night.

The Falcons put together a near perfect game to defeat Notre Dame with six players contributing to the scoring totals including 18 from Sam Beskind, 17 from Jared Irwin, 11 from Ryan Green, nine from Bobby Padilla, eight from Aaron Ayres and eight from Spencer Lewis.

Beskind and Irwin have been called upon to carry a lot of the load this year but D'Amore has counted on role players like Lewis and Padilla to bring the team home and the win against Queen Creek was no different.

Queen Creek was in striking distance for most of the first half and the Bulldogs pulled to within 37-30 with 3:18 left in the third but Lewis entered the game and hit two 3-pointers to go along with two more by Irwin and the score was suddenly 49-31 with 53.2 seconds left in the quarter.

Lewis provided the spark to fuel the separation and Padilla came in to close it out with seven points down the stretch.

"Coach wants us to come off the bench to proved a spark on defense or to help push the scoring," Padilla explained. "I like to push the score so I'm excited about the win."

Padilla sat out last year after transferring from Sunnyside where he was a standout golfer. Padilla was also part of the vaunted Sunnyside freshman basketball class, along with Jacob Inclan, that is now sitting on a 6-seed in the D-II tournament.

Padilla is expected to join the Pima golf program next year.

Gibson will lose six seniors to graduation including Tyler Bloom, Malik Cobbins, Bradley Woods and Frigny Niclasse.  All four scored in double figures against Catalina Foothills.

Catalina Foothills will face No. 7 Saguaro (19-9) Saturday night in the second round of the D-II playoffs.