Southern teams sweep into final

Nick Christensen

Monday, Nov. 29, 2004 | 9:06 a.m.

One team did it in the wind, another did it in the snow. And for the first time ever, two Southern Nevada teams will play for the large-school football championship Saturday at Sam Boyd Stadium.

In Summerlin, Palo Verde drove the ball seemingly at will on the previously stingy McQueen defense in the Panthers' 21-14 victory. With a steady 25 mph wind blowing off the Spring Mountains, Palo Verde's ground attack compiled 246 yards and Jarrell Harrison completed three of six passes for 37 yards as the undefeated Panthers moved onto their first state championship after making the state semifinals for the past three years.

And in Sparks, Reed running back Ryan Lammie suffered a rib injury on his school's snowy, muddy and just plain messy field while Las Vegas' Eric Jordan ran for 282 yards on 29 carries and all three of his team's touchdowns. The Wildcats advanced to their second state championship game in a row with a 21-14 win.

Palo Verde's win was probably the more surprising of the two, given the way McQueen has dominated teams defensively this year.

McQueen coach Ken Dalton said ball control was a key for the Panthers. Palo Verde went ahead 21-7 with 3:36 to go, but got the ball back 52 seconds later as McQueen's Nick Nistler hit C.J. Riley for a 44-yard touchdown pass to bring McQueen to within a touchdown.

Palo Verde drove the ball 17 yards in the next two minutes and 19 seconds, leaving McQueen with 25 seconds to score from its 40. But when Palo Verde's Sam King sacked Nistler, the ball came loose and Anthony White recovered to secure the Panthers' win.

"Palo Verde controlled time and distance," McQueen coach Ken Dalton said.

Meanwhile in Sparks, Las Vegas' game started half an hour late because of the 6 inches of snow that fell.

"It was bad. It was real bad," Faircloth said. "They had blowers cleaning the field off. The field was frozen and snowy when they started and it became a mud pit."

But the mud pit became a demolition derby with Jordan dominating on offense.

"At first it seemed bad, we'd never played in the cold before," Jordan said. "I thought we were just going to go out there and die. We got out there and it was pretty cool."

Easy words for a kid whose 50-yard touchdown run the first time he touched the ball put Vegas up 7-0.

"I think we were helped by the weather a bit," Jordan said from his team's slow-moving bus as it wound through the Truckee Canyon east of Reno. "I made a couple catches where guys would just slip."

The win was sweet for Las Vegas after the Wildcats lost the state championship 6 miles away at UNR's Mackay Stadium last year.

"It obviously means a lot from the standpoint of the kids getting to play next week," Faircloth said. "That's been the focus of the whole offseason is we want another chance."