Friday, Nov. 5, 2004 | 10:16 a.m.
Western (3-7, 2-3 SW)
at Palo Verde (9-0, 5-0 NW)
Tonight, 7, Palo Verde High School
Alta at Pavilion Center, Summerlin
Previous meeting: Sept 10 -- Palo Verde beat Western, 47-7.
Mutual opponents: Basic (1-8) -- Palo Verde won 56-0, Western won 30-6; Cheyenne (7-2) -- Palo Verde won 35-32, Western lost 0-18; Eldorado (7-3) -- Palo Verde won 20-14, Western lost 27-6.
Key for Palo Verde: Stay healthy. The Panthers will get their points on Western again, just don't do it at the expense of next week's game.
Key for Western: Look up game plan against Bishop Gorman. When the Warr iors lost to the Gaels 7-6, they were that close to making the Southwest that much more interesting.
Sierra Vista (7-3, 3-2 SW)
at Cheyenne (7-2, 4-1 NW)
Today, 7, Cheyenne High School
Alexander at Simmons, North Las Vegas
Mutual opponents: Western (3-7) -- Cheyenne won 18-0, Sierra Vista won 35-6.
Key for Cheyenne: Fire up the offense. Without Jeff Long, Sierra Vista' s a different team.
Key for Sierra Vista: Recapture the magic of the start of the year. Some thing hasn't been right with the Lions lately.
Palo Verde's football team is hoping the third time's the charm when it comes to title runs.
In 2002, the Panthers were thwarted in the state semifinals by eventual state champion McQueen. Last year, Palo Verde lost to an emotionally charged Las Vegas team in the semifinals after going undefeated up to that point.
Again this year, nobody's found an answer for coach Darwin Rost's double-wing offense, but the difference is that this season, there's no more room for disappointment. The Panthers have 24 seniors, and with a big chunk of Palo Verde's zone lost to the new Canyon Springs High School, this could be Palo's last best chance.
The Panthers' playoff run starts tonight when they host 3-7 Western, a team they already beat once this season.
"When we played them earlier in the year, they played pretty physical," Palo Verde quarterback Jarrell Harrison said. "They held Bishop Gorman to seven points, they have defended pretty good."
Even though it made the playoffs, Western's season has been a disappointment. The Warriors have been woeful on offense, scoring just 131 points this season, 20th out of the 28 4A teams in Southern Nevada. But they did make strides this year, particularly on defense, which was highlighted by the 7-6 game loss to ninth-ranked Bishop Gorman.
"They've gotten a lot better," Rost said. "They've got good-looking kids, they play real hard, they've gotten a lot better as a team. They execute on both sides of the ball a lot better, and Julian Sample is a game breaker."
Sample, the Warriors' quarterback, ended the season going 50-for-121 passing for 822 yards. Those numbers, said Western coach Brian Murray, could have been much better.
"I feel really bad for our offensive players because we do have some talented kids and we just haven't been able to get things going to the point where their numbers reflect their ability," Murray said. "Julian's a great athlete, and we've got Chris Fowler and Prentyce Albright who are dangerous receivers, who for various reasons, we haven't been able to get the ball to them as I'd hoped, whether that be the line missing a block or a bad throw or a bad catch. One of those three things seemed to happen more often than it should."
Western is by no means ready to roll over tonight. Murray said his team gained some confidence by watching film of last week's game, in which Palo Verde trailed Cheyenne for much of the game before coming back to win 35-32.
"I think seeing the tape on Cheyenne woke them up and made them realize that Palo Verde is not a machine, they're just kids like the kids that go to our school," Murray said. "They saw a team (Cheyenne) who had them beaten, and a team that we had played earlier in the year. They had scored twice on us, and the lack of moving the ball on our part really prevented us from being able to be more competitive in that game."
Murray is in his first year at Western, after coach Charles Anthony left to fill the vacancy at Cheyenne. Anthony nearly led the Desert Shields to an undefeated season, until last week's comeback by Palo Verde handed Cheyenne its first loss. The Desert Shields (7-2) had to forfeit their first game of the season due to a fight in last year's playoffs.
Anthony said his team handled last week's loss fairly well.
"They're picking up the pieces and we're just moving on," he said. "It was a good game on both sides, and we try to move on now."
Sierra Vista at Cheyenne
Cheyenne will host Sierra Vista tonight, another disappointing team from the Southwest that looked set to win the division before a double-overtime loss to Bonanza and a last-week defeat by Bishop Gorman set the Mountain Lions all the way back to third.
Sierra Vista has been in a funk to close the season, a funk that coach Ben Johnson still hasn't figured out how to solve. The only common denominator for the Lions' struggles has been an ankle sprain sustained by Jeff Long, a key piece in Desert Pines' defense last year who also had extensive time at running back with Sierra Vista.
"We haven't been clicking for the last couple weeks and we're trying to get over a hump and trying to get back on track," Johnson said. "I don't know where we went off track but we have played some good teams, and we're trying to get the kids' confidence back up. They know they face a great challenge."
Cheyenne is loaded with talent, from running back Torrie Coleman to quarterback Quentin Carter to Evon Buhecker and Perry Eppinger on defense. But Sierra Vista has the tools, it's just a matter of them working around the loss of Long's offensive abilities.
"I think they're a team that is pretty good, I think the last couple of games though, they haven't been very consistent," Anthony said of Sierra Vista. "They have some pretty good football players, and they're capable of beating anyone. I know he (Johnson) worked hard and built that program up. It's going to be a good game."
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