Portales head coach Mark Gallegos makes a point during a timeout Saturday night.

The Portales Ram basketball team has had only a few days of practice as an entire unit, but it was enough to ride an offensive explosion and beat the Moriarty Pintos Saturday night in Portales 88-52.

“We could have scored more points if we had been a little bit more organized,” Gallegos said. “And that’s part of not having been together very long.”

The Portales offense put the game out-of-reach after only the first period as Ram senior Billy Good scored 12 of his 20 points in the first quarter and the Rams led heading into the second period 32-13.

Good followed that up with 8 points in the second quarter, and Portales led at the half 52-24.

Senior William Archibeque posted 8 points in the third period, leading the Rams to a 73-38 advantage going into the final stanza, where Moriarty held the ball, preventing the Rams from posting an even larger final score.

Junior Marcus Slocum led the Ram charge with 22 points, followed by Good’s 20 points.

Archibeque and first-year Ram Jesus Davalos both scored 13 points.

While the Ram offense was firing on all cylinders, the Portales defense failed to meet its goal of holding Moriarty to under 40 points.

“We got out in front, we got a little cocky, we stopped playing defense and then we didn’t really play our game like we did in the first half,” Partin said.

“We were too busy giving them easy baskets,” Gallegos said. “We were too busy not being able to get organized.”

Davalos is just one of several Rams coming out of football season with only a handful of practices on the basketball court.

“I feel lucky to get an opportunity to play this early,” Davalos said. “I didn’t picture myself playing this early in the season. Luckily coach Gallegos gave me a chance and I’m running with it.”

“We’re trying to get Jesus to learn some things,” Gallegos said. “And the football guys are still having to learn different things.”

Partin agreed, and said the Ram defense should improve as everybody gets more practice time.

“We’re real fresh,” Partin said. “We just got all of our football players back so we’re kind of behind. We just have to catch up.”

The Rams (1-1) travel to Clovis on Saturday, before hosting Muleshoe December 19.

“The good part is we know where we can be,” Gallegos said. “It’s just going to take some time. The hard part is we have to go to Clovis. Clovis is a team where if you make a mistake, they’re going to exploit it.”