Tomorrow is the traditional Good Friday, but for River’s Edge I resident Phil Griego, last Friday was a great Friday.

One by one, Rio Rancho’s chances to lay claim to a state basketball championship went poof.

The city’s high school teams fell first with the Rams boys losing in the Class 5A quarterfinals on Wednesday and the Rams girls falling out of the tournament in the 5A semifinals on Thursday. Then Rio Rancho resident Willie Owens’ Class 3A Sandi Prep boys were knocked out of contention for a blue trophy in Friday’s semifinals.

That left one Rio Ranchoan with a shot at a blue trophy: Griego, who led his St. Pius X girls to the 4A championship in 2006.

Coincidentally, his route to The Pit began in Rio Rancho at Santa Ana Star Center with a 46-25 victory over Del Norte in the quarterfinals and a 72-50 thrashing of Deming in the semifinals.

Mission accomplished: St. Pius X 57, Kirtland Central 48.

Two may have been the Sartans’ lucky number: St. Pius X (27-2) was the 4A field’s No. 2 seed, had two losses to that point and were going for Griego’s second championship.

One of the Sartans’ losses, by the way, had been to Kirtland Central. The other had been to 5A state champ La Cueva.

Their opponent Friday evening in The Pit was the No.1 seed, Kirtland Central. The Lady Broncos are to girls 4A basketball what Artesia is to that classification’s football or the New England Patriots in the NFL.

Kirtland Central was appearing in its 17th state championship game over the last 20 years — that all but spells dynasty.

Make way for the Sartans, who have chalked up five straight 20-win seasons under Griego, seven in all in his dozen seasons at the helm, and have some talented — and tall — girls coming back next season.

The teams traded baskets and the lead throughout most of the first half, with the Broncos (27-4) using a 7-0 run to briefly gain the lead, then the Sartans took the lead to keep when they closed out the first half on a 7-0 run of their own.

Six Sartans scored in the third period, which ended with SPX leading 42-36.

A 6-0 run to start the fourth quarter, keyed by back-to-back layups by senior Courtney Tinnin — a member of the ‘06 squad who didn’t play as a junior, choosing to focus on soccer — made it a 12-point lead. Plenty of time remained, 5:29, but the Broncos didn’t have an answer for the Sartans’ height inside and could get no closer than nine the rest of the way.

Tinnin led the way again, this time with a double-double: 16 points and 10 rebounds, as the Sartans out-boarded the Broncos 50-38.

“As a coach, I’ve been doing this at St. Pius for 12 years and I was at Cibola for eight years (as an assistant),” Griego said in the post game conference. “I’ve never been around a team that’s been this cohesive, this fun to coach and be around.

“It all starts with leadership,” he continued. “We didn’t lose many kids from last year’s team; a lot of the same team is intact, but what we did have is we had kids that led us very well and the addition of Courtney back to our team, I think, sealed the deal for us. She was really the catalyst for what we were trying to do on the defensive.

“Those kind of leaders, with Audrey (Dettwiller) and Mary Rose (Paiz) and Lucretia (Duran) and Tory (Perko), and those kids all pulling in the same directions and they all have one thing in mind — and that’s the team.

“When you can have 12 kids pulling in the same direction and not concerned about their own stats, it’s beautiful thing — and you saw the results of that tonight,” he concluded.

The victory was the Sartans’ school-record 19th in a row and marked the fourth time the school had faced KCHS in six championship games in school history.