Palo Verde shows what’s really special

Nick Christensen

Monday, Oct. 18, 2004 | 9:51 a.m.

Since August, Shadow Ridge coach J.D. Johnson has been talking about his team's special defensive plan for league rival Palo Verde's vaunted double-wing offense.

That defense, if it even existed, didn't even make it to Friday night.

Second-ranked Palo Verde rolled to a 50-19 win, bumping Shadow Ridge down to a tie for third in the Northwest division while keeping Palo Verde in a tie for first with Cheyenne.

Palo Verde coach Darwin Rost said that the special defense fell apart in Thursday's undercard games.

"He tried it in the freshman and JV games. He tried to run a 5-4, and when you look up on the Internet how to stop a double-wing, that's it," Rost said.

After Friday's defeat, Johnson said the Palo Verde defense was just a ruse to try and get in the Panthers' heads.

"There was no special defense, it was just psychological stuff," Johnson said. "We couldn't match their strength up front. There was no special D."

Palo Verde logged 492 yards of total offense on the Mustangs, including three rare passes from Jarrell Harrison for 127 yards. Going into Friday's game, Harrison was 11-for-19 for 308 yards on the season.

The loss was the second in a row for the Mustangs, and the largest margin this year. Rost, the head of the high school coaches' association, said that he'd heard from colleagues this week about this game.

"I think it meant a lot more to the other coaches in town," he said. "They wanted us to get after them a little bit."

Shadow Ridge defeated Rancho 68-0 earlier this year, and also shut out Chaparral 49-0 to close out non-league play.

For all the talk about the matchup on that side of the ball, it was Palo Verde's defense more than anything that stole the show Friday. Shadow Ridge quarterback Chris Berkeley, who came into Friday with 1,076 passing yards on 66-for-99 passing, went just 4-for-15 for 67 yards. He was sacked four times. Running back Ricky Snodgrass, second in Las Vegas at 1,046 yards heading into Friday, had just 75 yards.

Not Chris Faircloth.

Faircloth's Las Vegas Wildcats, still smarting from a 28-21 Week 7 homecoming loss to Eldorado, bounced back to beat Rancho 49-14 for Sir Herkimer's Bone Saturday on still-water-logged Canyon Springs High's field.

"We're still struggling to click where we'd like to," Faircloth said Sunday. "Our turnover ratio isn't very good. We're definitely down from where we've been in the past. It kind of hurts as far as getting any consistency on offense. We're not near, for whatever reason, the ball-hogs we've been on defense. We're trying to figure out that one too.

The Wildcats are running out of time. Their playoff position will be decided over the next two weeks -- lose Friday against Desert Pines, and they're likely relegated to the fourth seed in the Northeast. Win Friday, and their game against Valley the following Thursday decides who gets the second seed and who's third in the division.

"It's great to be in this situation," Skyhawks coach Doug Thornhill said. "It's good for our kids and school. We're excited to be where we're at. I think we (expected this) as a team and a staff, but it's a surprise to a lot of people."

In their three league wins, Silverado held Basic to seven points, Coronado to six, and shut out Liberty last week. This week, the Skyhawks take on league favorite Foothill, a team whose offense struggled at the start of the year but has opened up since league play began.

"They're really talented but we think our defense can kind of hold them in check a little bit," Thornhill said.

The winner of Friday's game at Silverado will clinch the Southeast Division title, and the top berth in the first round of the playoffs.

The 4-4 Bengals upended No. 8 Sierra Vista 35-34 after a missed extra point in the college-style overtime. Western, now 2-6, returned a bad snap for a touchdown and was leading 6-0 at halftime against 5-2 Bishop Gorman, but the Gaels came back to win 7-6.

If Bonanza wins its remaining games -- against Western and 0-7 Clark -- and Sierra Vista closes out its season with wins against Durango and Gorman, the teams will be in a three-way tie for the top seed in the Southwest. The tiebreaker for that scenario would be defensive points allowed, up to 13 per game.

Bishop Gorman currently holds the edge in that category, allowing a total of 13 points in league play so far. Sierra Vista's second at 25, and Bonanza's right behind at 26.

The last time the Rattlers won a league game, as coach Tyrone Armstrong remembers it, he was an assistant at Cheyenne and Mojave upset his Desert Shield team to close out the season.

Friday night, Mojave beat Centennial 20-7 to get that first win in three seasons. The win also had Armstrong's highly talented team talking about the postseason, something that wasn't even a thought in the tough Northwest division.

"They were excited about the opportunity to hopefully get some more so we can try and get into the playoffs," Armstrong said. "The kids are working hard at it. We've got like 26 seniors, they really would like to play in the playoffs, get in there, and show people what they can do."

The Rattlers, led by quarterback D.J. Tilche's 1,000-plus passing yards, can actually clinch a playoff berth by winning one of their next two games. That won't be an easy task, considering those games are against Shadow Ridge and Cimarron-Memorial. But stranger things have happened.

"I'm learning that nobody's overlooking us, and we have to go out and do what we do best, and let the cards fall where they may," Armstrong said. "We've got weapons, and I think people respect that now. It's important for us to get our weapons hitting on all cylinders."

Galena, which was coming off an 11-game streak of the losing variety, relied on three field goals and stingy defense to unseat the Miners. Bishop Manogue could have clinched a playoff spot in arguably the state's toughest division, the North's High Desert League, with a win.

Manogue (3-1, 7-1) takes on top-ranked McQueen (7-0, 4-0) on Friday.