Monday, Aug. 30, 2004 | 9:50 a.m.
Las Vegas 34...Pine View (UT) 28
This week: Las Vegas (1-0) at Snow Canyon (St. George, Utah)
Desert Pines 14...Western 6 This week: Western (0-1) vs. Eldorado (0-1), Desert Pines off
Sierra Vista 41...Chaparral 0
This week: Chaparral (0-1) at Durango (0-0), Sierra Vista (1-0) vs. Valley (0-0)
Green Valley 41...Rancho 6
This week: Rancho (0-1) at Shadow Ridge (0-0), Green Valley (1-0) at Bonanza (1-0)
Bonanza 48...Liberty 7 This week: Liberty (0-1) at Clark (0-0), Bonanza (1-0) vs. Green Valley (1-0)
Coronado 66...Del Sol 0
This week: Del Sol (0-1) at Virgin Valley (0-1), Coronado (1-0) at Centennial (0-0)
Faith Luth. 36...The Meadows 7
This week: Faith Lutheran (1-0) at Dayton, The Meadows (0-1) at Milford, Utah
Moapa Valley 35...Carson 10
This week: Moapa Valley (1-0) at Kanab, Utah
Dixie (UT) 38...Virgin Valley 15
This week: Virgin Valley (0-1) vs. Del Sol (0-1)
Judging by the number of coaches whose teams were "slow to start" Friday, some of their colleagues are in deep trouble this week.
Nearly every winning coach -- and several of the losing ones -- said his team had trouble getting into the flow in Friday's opening week Hall of Fame games. That could play into the hands of the six schools that did opt to play Friday, and got an extra 48 minutes to fire up their teams' engines.
Favorites such as Desert Pines and Foothill struggled through much of their games. Teams such as Sierra Vista and Coronado, which handily won their openers, still have room for improvement this week, according to their coaches.
Friday's biggest surprise came in southern Henderson, when Foothill was tied with Eldorado at 20-20 late in Friday's fourth quarter. With 4:39 in regulation, and momentum in the Sundevils' hands since the second quarter, the Falcons began a drive at their 20-yard-line.
Foothill had struggled with penalties the whole game, and the Falcons' running game had been relatively quiet after rolling all over Eldorado in the first quarter. But it was that running game, anchored by Arthur Mayville, D'Angelo Jones and Antiono Hartwell, that led the Falcons 65 yards down the field and set up Chris Gerfy's 37-yard game-winning field goal.
Penalties and the mid-game disappearance of Jones put the Falcons, and their fans, on edge. Between Jones' touchdown to put the Falcons up 14-0 with 1:55 remaining in the first quarter, and Foothill's mid-fourth quarter drive that put them ahead 20-14, Jones had five carries for 8 yards.
"That was a poor job on my part," Falcons coach Ray Fenton said. "The kid's pretty talented to not be touching the ball."
On Sunrise Mountain, it wasn't first-game jitters but second-half confidence that nearly cost Las Vegas its first game of the season. The Wildcats led Pine View of St. George, Utah, 22-0 at halftime when the Panthers got back in it.
"The momentum changed on us, and we could do very little to change it," Wildcats coach Chris Faircloth said of his first game as a head coach. "Their guys really turned it on."
Faircloth's team's fast start was the exception. Desert Pines coach Leon Evans called his team's start "horrible." Sierra Vista's Ben Johnson said his Mountain Lions have "a lot of things to work on," after his team's 41-0 win. And Greg Murphy of Green Valley and Coronado's Paul Berg said their teams had far too many penalties, despite two runaway victories -- Green Valley winning 41-6 and Coronado winning 66-0.
Berg said it's just a symptom of opening week.
"You watch anybody's first game, even in the NFL, and they're a little sloppy," said Berg, Coronado's second-year coach. "It takes a while to get play timing, alignment, things like that."
So how will the teams that didn't play this week do against teams with that extra game?
"I think teams that played last week are going to have a slight edge," said Palo Verde coach Darwin Rost. Rost's Panthers open Friday against Basic -- a team that opted not to play a Hall of Fame game.
Several of the teams that didn't play did scrimmage, including Cimarron-Memorial, which faces Foothill this week.
Cimarron coach Ron Smeltzer said he knows what to expect.
"We're probably going to make some mistakes, just because it's our first game," he said. "They'll be a little ahead of us."
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