The inner voices said it all for the Mora Rangers.

In Derek Hurtado's mind, the voice said, "Don't panic."

In James Branch's mind, it was, "It's just a game."

They helped drown out the 550 reverberating vocal chords that pulsated through Santa Fe Preparatory's Prep Gymnasium on Friday night.

Those inner thoughts infused calm amid the chaos of a District 2AA boys basketball game -- one that determined the district lead.

When Hurtado made one of two free throws with 1.8 seconds left, it allowed the Rangers to head home with a 53-51 win and regain the tenuous control it had in 2AA.

Hurtado and the Rangers (21-3 overall, 5-1 2AA) survived a 21-4 run that gave the Blue Griffins a 47-44 lead on Joey Lambert's 3-pointer with 4:10 left, and the key was not to press that red button that often leads road teams on a long, silent trip home.

"If you panic, then everything starts getting out of proportion," Hurtado said. "They get easy baskets and get hot."

It didn't get any hotter with the Prep student section yelling and screaming like it never has before -- because the last time Prep played to a sold-out home crowd, many of current players weren't born yet. It was 1995 and the Blue Griffins were on their way to their last district title.

To do it against the Rangers, a team this group of seniors has never beaten (not even in middle school), would have been all the sweeter. In fact, Prep has never said it has beaten Mora.

"It makes it that much more personal for me and the other three seniors," guard Ryan Evaldson said. "We've been there since seventh grade, going up to Mora every year, never having won and always seeing us on the losing side. We wanted to see it differently, but we weren't able to, I guess."

The weapon that got the Blue Griffins (18-5, 4-2) the lead -- the 3, of which there were four in the fourth quarter -- allowed the Rangers to regroup. Prep missed back-to-back triples with the score 47-46, then Mora's Cody Najar missed a runner along the baseline.

Only Hurtado was there to grab the miss and his reverse putback gave the Rangers a 48-47 lead they never lost.

"I saw it was going to be a little short, so I ran under it and got the rebound," Hurtado said. "I saw the opening and I took the shot."

It was the 15th and final offensive rebound for Mora, with 11 coming in the first half to take a 22-16 lead. The margin grew to 40-26 before Prep made its run.

Still, the offensive rebounding totals were an unlikely statistic. Prep has three players 6-foot-4 and taller. The Rangers counter with 6-0 Jose Trujillo, and a renewed effort after a 61-60 loss to Pecos on Monday.

"You could hear a pin drop," said Branch, Mora's first-year head coach. "But we learned from it. We talked about character, and dealing with adversity. We've lost three times this season, and we've responded with a whale of an effort."

For Branch, he dealt with this game in a different fashion. Coming into the Santa Fe, he realized it was exactly a year ago that he lost a good friend in former Las Vegas Robertson head boys basketball coach Fabian Trujillo, who died in a car accident. The two met playing basketball at New Mexico Highlands in the late 1970s.

After the Pecos loss, Branch told his players how much it ate at him.

"I tell them, a piece of me dies," Branch said. "I love the game that much, and you feel that way after losing a battle like that. But putting that into perspective, I was thinking about Fabian and I said, 'It really is just a basketball game.'

"I mean, here's my buddy, and he's gone too soon and I'm still here."

That calm helped him stomach a
3-for-6 finish at the free-throw line and Evaldson's 15-footer that rimmed out with 3.3 seconds left that would have made it 53-52, Prep.

The voice still lingered.

Contact James Barron at 986-3045 or jbarron@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at thereadbarron.com.