It's hard to play 4-on-5 in basketball.

Santa Fe Waldorf did that Friday night in its District 1B opener.

With Maxwell daring the Wolves' fifth player to shoot, Waldorf struggled to find a way to score. Because of those pains, the Bears escaped with a 38-37 win in the Fort Marcy Complex.

The Bears escaped because they built a 28-18 lead after three quarters, which was just enough to withstand a furious comeback by the Wolves, led by guard Edgar Davila's 11 points in the final quarter.

That it took that long for Waldorf (9-7) to get on track demonstrated the difficulty in playing short-handed, so to speak.

"We were dribbling into trouble because the middle is clogged," said Rob Clifford, Waldorf head coach.

That's what one extra defender in the post can do to a team. The Bears elected not to defend starter Starr Adams or reserves Abel Knouse and Sean Ramsey out on the wing.

Adams tried to make Maxwell pay for the move, but his pair of jumpers early were well off the mark. Knouse was the only one of the trio to hit a shot -- a 15-footer with 1 minute, 46 seconds left in the third quarter to cut the Bears' advantage to 26-18.

Otherwise, the focus was on the quartet of Davila, Elliot Radsliff, Daniel McCormick and Josh Hagen. That came from Maxwell head coach Eloy Brazil's observations from watching Waldorf in warmups.

"I had never seem them play before," said Brazil, a veteran coach of 34 years in the state. "I could tell that No. 22 [Davila] and 32 [Radsliff] were good shooters, so we put our two best defenders on them."

As a result, the Wolves suffered through droughts.

They hit a 7:36 dry spell in the first quarter after opening up with a Hagens layup. Waldorf didn't score for another 3:45 after another Hagens bucket that stopped the first drought. They didn't score for a 5:08 stretch until Davila's 10-foot floater made it 22-12, Maxwell with 4:21 left in the third.

Those stretches showed the crisis of confidence Adams, Knouse and Ramsey suffered from throughout the game.

"They just need a little more confidence in themselves and step it up," Davila said. "It's a lot of pressure, and we were talking to them about imagining that it was just another practice. I guess it didn't work."

What did work, though, was the Wolves' full-court press. It forced seven turnovers in the fourth, and that opened things up for Davila and Radsliff.

Davila hit three 3s in the quarter and Radsliff hit a 3 that got the Wolves to within 34-32 with 1:53 to go.

Davila also had five steals to key the comeback.

"He is our defensive catalyst," Clifford said. "He's what we needed to get us back in the ball game. Unfortunately, the clock ran out on us."

It did, but not before Davila hit a triple with :03 left for 38-37. After a pair of timeouts, the Bears (9-4) used a play in which the inbounder passed to another inbounder along the baseline, and he found Isaac Pacheco downcourt to run out the clock.

"It's an old, old play," Brazil said. "A lot of people forget about it. I guess when you're as old as I am, you remember it."

The Wolves won't forget that the rest of the district will use similar ploys against them.

All they can do is get that fifth player to earn some respect.

Contact James Barron at jbarron@sfnewmexican.com or 986-3045.