By Don Ketchum

In Todd Fazio’s first year as boys’ basketball coach at Scottsdale Desert Mountain High in 2006-07, he led the Wolves to the top of the mountain, winning the Class 5A Division II championship.

He treasures those moments because he knows it doesn’t happen every year. The team has fallen short every year since.

One thing that Fazio, 88-55 in five seasons, has been able to count on – a challenging schedule.

“We’ve always been in a tough region (Desert Valley) and we’ve always had tough competition,’’ he said.

Now that the state has been realigned, the Wolves find themselves in the biggest division – Division I, Section III – and perhaps have their most challenging schedule to date.

Many of the old Desert Valley opponents remain, but the section also has other formidable teams – including Anthem Boulder Creek, Scottsdale Chaparral, Phoenix Desert Vista, Mesa, Mesa Mountain View and Phoenix Pinnacle.

That’s why to Fazio and his team, every game, every opportunity, counts. Such as Desert Mountain’s  season-opening game on Tuesday, in the Paradise Valley Invitational at Phoenix Pinnacle. Games also are played at Phoenix Paradise Valley. The tournament continues Wednesday and runs Friday and Saturday.

Desert Mountain rolled up a 70-44 victory over Phoenix Sandra Day O’Connor.

The Wolves had a distinct height advantage, and kept feeding the ball to 6-foot-6 Connor Johnson, who had a solid game with 26 points and 12 rebounds.

“We exploited that (height advantage) a bit,’’ Fazio said.

“For the first game, I thought we played well, but we have a long way to go. We have to make sure we continue to rebound and share the ball.’’

Sandra Day O’Connor struggled out of the gate, scoring just 15 points in the first half. But the Eagles, playing under their third coach in as many seasons (Stephen Cervantez), played much better in the second half, nearly doubling that amount.

Fazio is looking forward to see how his team progresses.

“We have eight seniors, so they’ve been through all of it before. That should help,’’ Fazio said. “The way the new alignment is set up, we still have the same amount of games, but it is condensed in terms of time. So that means we could have three games a week. We’re going to have to be in shape.’’