There are times in a basketball game when the trust level, or lack thereof, between a coach and his team is very noticeable by the in-game decisions.

An example of trust came in the Centennial boys basketball team’s 72-66 win over Salpointe Catholic in the first round of the Orange bracket Saturday at Westwood for the Visit Mesa Basketball Challenge.

Salpointe (3-4) came out efficient, running its base offense and slowly built the lead while the Coyotes were over playing passing lanes on defense, missed their first six shots and had three turnovers.

Centennial coach Zach Hettel never called a timeout. A lot of coaches would have taken a 30-second break, just to give his team a chance at a restart and/or lay into the players and tell them to make up from their Christmas break slumped.

Not at down eight, 10 or even 14 points.

Hettel let his players figure it out. Nearly nine minutes of the of 20-minute half was gone before the Coyotes (8-1) finally scored at 11:45 remaining to make it 14-2.

“It’s a combination of it is early and I wanted to see if they could work through it, and a little bit ego because I don’t like to take a timeout and give (the opponent) a change to clap it up and enjoy the moment.” Hettel explained. “This has kind of been the norm for us. We get down and they slowly make their way back.

“We are an older team. If we were younger, I’d probably be quicker to take timeouts but we have four seniors who have played a lot, so we hang onto those timeouts.”

The slow starts have been commonplace thus far the Coyotes but having a veteran team with several seniors playing major minutes, and the trust that has been built in recent years allowed Hettel to be patient.

Even if it wasn’t easy.

“I told them they’ve helped me with my patience because they’ve shown me it is not a time to freak out and panic,” he said. “I’d much rather us not play that way. I am going to have to go back to the doctor and refill my blood pressure medicine.”

“I’d much rather us not play that way. I am going to have to go back to the doctor and refill my blood pressure medicine," Centennial coach Zach Hettel said.

His players appreciated it and it paid off as Centennial closed within 33-29 at the half. The first lead came at 40-39 on a breakaway dunk by senior Sekou Sackor with 12:12 remaining.

Salpointe took the lead at 58-57 on an inside move by Cameron Hicks and 63-62 on Austin Gawlik’s jumper, but Centennial senior guard Aidan Delafield took over from there as he shook a defender and made mid-range jumper for the 64-63 lead and also made all four free throws – after missing his first six - in the final moments of the game.

“Coach trusts and lets us play our way back into it.” said Delafield, who finished with 17 points. “For some reason we keep putting ourselves in these holes and we have to dig ourselves out of it. Once we get in front, we keep on going and putting it on them and get the win.”

Salpointe, which played without three players including two starters (David Mujembery, and Kingston Campas) because of family trips, struggled with facing the defensive pressure and missed some critical free throws as well.

“The pressure defense got to us,” Salpointe coach Chase Babb said. “They play basketball a little different in Phoenix than Tucson and it’s why we come up here. They play a little more aggressive up here. A lot of that stuff would be fouls in Tucson. We need our guys to play through that so that’s why we do this.”

Despite giving up the big lead, struggling to break the press and missing some key free throws, the Lancers will get better because of the experience.

“I went deeper on the bench than I wanted to go,” Babb said. “My second team is pretty equal (to the first) and it is very competitive in practice, but we can’t emulate this type of pressure and game speed in practice. We will add this to our practice plan, get up in their grill on defense, and we’ll improve from this experience.”

The Orange bracket will continue play Monday with Centennial vs. Notre Dame at 1 p.m. and Corona del Sol vs. McClintock at 2:30 p.m. with the championship game on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.

In first round action, Corona beat Valley Vista 71-46, McClintock topped Chavez 78-67, and Notre Dame handled Paradise Valley, 64-45.

The event format had to change after two teams canceled late. Instead of pool play to start, it was broken into two separate brackets.

First-day results in the Blue bracket: North Valley Christian Academy 60, Westwood 56; Cactus Shadows 74, Lakeside (Wash) 64, Rancho Solano Prep 53, Banks (Oregon) 46.