No. 8 Perry beat top-seeded Sunnyside 82-41 Saturday night at Desert View High School to advance to the semifinal round for the fourth time in the last five years, including the last three in a row. The Pumas lost to eventual state champion Valley Vista 48-47 in 2020 and the program came into the 2022 playoffs as a No. 11 seed but knocked off No. 6 Cibola, No. 3 Westwood and No. 2 Xavier to make it to the final where the team lost to No. 1 Valley Vista to take runner-up.

The Pumas made it to the Open Division semifinals last year as a No. 2 seed but an 8-10 record in power-raking games this winter forced the program to fight its way back to the top and Perry beat Westwood 86-48 in the play-in phase just to get to the state tournament. From there, the Pumas beat Chandler 61-53 in the first round and then Sunnyside last night by a huge margin. No. 4 Cesar Chavez will be waiting for the Pumas Tuesday night but the seeding doesn’t really matter to Mike Curtis at this point, and it looks like 2022 all over again.

‘We're just battle tested. Our schedule was the toughest in the state, it just was a gauntlet like, we never made excuses. We just kept trying to get better every day and it just finally started to click and we're playing really well,” Curtis explained.

“We're Perry where there's high expectations with basketball, we just want to win the day, every day, and then at the end of it, things kind of work itself out,” Curtis added.

The Pumas pulled away from the Blue Devils early and sophomore Bella Burcar led the way with 20 points, paced by four 3-pointers. Burcar, the daughter if NAU men’s basketball coach Shane Burcar, helped lead Flagstaff to the 4A state championship as a freshman before transferring to Perry this year. Fellow sophomore Sage Henry is a Division I prospect and she also scored 20 points. Junior Maci Hess added 13 and sophomore Novelle McQuiston scored 11.

Sunnyside finished the regular season with a 17-1 record, with the 51-48 loss came at Cesar Chavez, which indicates just how good the Blue Devils were as a team heading into the game against Perry. Senior standout Nayeli Nidez-Acuña scored 17 points against the vaunted Puma defense and she is the main reason for the rise of the program under Justin Delgado.

Nayeli Nidez-Acuña (Andy Morales/AZPreps365)