ALBUQUERQUE — Junior guard Megan Muñiz put on a second-half clinic at The Pit Tuesday afternoon, scoring 16 straight points as Rio Rancho rallied to beat Alamogordo and advance into the Class 5A semifinals.

The third-seeded Rams (22-7) saw a 12-4 run by the sixth-seeded Tigers (23-7) turn into a 12-point deficit, and only a 5-0 run to end the first half kept the deficit at a more-manageable seven at intermission.

“It was important to get those last five points,” Muñiz said. “We didn’t get down on ourselves.” Coach Bob McIntyre, taking his team into the state semifinals for the fifth time in 10 postseason appearances, said something at halftime that maybe made too much sense for his Rams.

“This is the way we’ve been all year,” he said in his postgame conference. “At halftime, I said think of the word ‘play.’

“In the first half, we took nervous shots, hurried,” he said. We win games with defense and heart and desire.”

And Muñiz.

Muñiz had passed the ball to senior Ashley Rhoades, who scored a bucket from inside the paint to help the Rams make it a one-possession game, 34-33, as the third quarter drew near its close.

Then it was Muñiz’s time to sparkle, as she sank a pair of free throws with 7.4 seconds left in the third to give the Rams a 35-34 lead.

The Tigers scored the first four points of the fourth period, but Muñiz nailed a 3-pointer from about three feet behind the top of the key for a deadlock at 38, the fifth and final time the game would be tied.

After Christine Veasley, who finished with 13 points to lead AHS, sank a free throw to make it 39-38, Muñiz went to work.

A six-footer made it 40-39, and a trey and two more free throws upped the Rams’ lead to 45-39.

Veasley swiped the ball from Rio Rancho’s Tracy Fosterling and took it in for a layup, but Muñiz responded with a 13-footer inside the lane with 2:15 to go for a47-41 Rams lead.

Veasley scored what turned out to be the final Tigers’ points on a 15-footer.

Then, Muñiz ended her impressive streak with two free throws, which came with 45.2 seconds left to play.

Fosterling, 3 for 7 at the line earlier, sank two more for 51-44 with 28.4 showing on the clock.

Rhoades sank one of two from the line with 16.9 seconds left in the Tigers’ season, and Courtney Solwick, grabbing the rebound on Rhoades’ miss from the charity stripe, turned it into a putback for the game’s final points.

Nobody cared that Solwick missed two freebies with.4 second to go.

Muñiz, making only four of nine shots from the field in the first half, when she was one of four from behind the arc, was four of five from the field and two for two from 3-point range in the second half to finish with 26 points.

Rhoades joined her in double figures with 11 points, while Fosterling had 9, Solwick had 4, and Ashlynn Steffensen and Kelsea Hawkins came off the bench to add 2 apiece.

Rhoades had a game-high 7 rebounds, as the Rams out-boarded the Tigers 32-26 in the game, after trailing AHS in that department, 20-16 at intermission.

“We knew we had to rebound good,” Rhoades said.

Before the game, McIntyre said he had three concerns about the Tigers: their pressure, which didn’t bother his team too much in light of the fact that the Rams had a dozen turnovers in the game to the Tigers’ 16; Alamogordo’s outside shooting — the Tigers went 3 for 12 from 3-point range, compared to the Rams’ 3 of 8 outing; and rebounding, which went decidedly in his team’s favor in the decisive second half.

“You can have a plan but they’ve got to make it work,” McIntyre concluded.

Tuesday afternoon, the Rams did just that — in the 16-minute second half.

Ram dunks: In Tuesday’s other 5A quarterfinals, former Rams assistant coach Lori Stephenson’s Cibola Cougars were eliminated by Las Cruces, 43-39; top-seeded La Cueva beat its District 2-5A rival Sandia for the fifth time this season, 63-54; and second-seeded Eldorado held off 10th-seeded Hobbs, 51-37.

... In today’s semifinal games, La Cueva meets Las Cruces at 9:45 a.m. and the Rams take on Eldorado at 1:15. “They don’t get any easier,” McIntyre said of the looming semifinal.” Eldorado beat the Rams 56-40 at EHS on Jan. 9. The Rams fell out of last year’s state tournament when Hobbs beat them 47-38 at Rio Rancho in a Round of 16 game. The Rams beat the Eagles in the postseason in 2000 and ‘01, and are 12-3 all-time against EHS.

... The 5A title tilt is Saturday at 2:30 p.m. in The Pit. All of the championship games may be viewed live on the Internet at www.nmaa.tv.