Columnist Nick Christensen: Wildcats take a familiar route this week

Nick Christensen

Friday, Sept. 10, 2004 | 9:58 a.m.

Nick Christensen covers high school athletics for the Las Vegas Sun. He an be reached at (702) 259-4085 or by e-mail at nick.christensen@ lasvegassun.com.

Believe it or not, Las Vegas High is not in Utah's 3A Region 9.

The Wildcats opened with two teams from the St. George area, edging perennial Dixie power Pine View 34-28 in their opener, then defeating almost-as-good Snow Canyon 26-6 after a furious 19-point fourth quarter run.

Now, Vegas takes on some local talent, facing Bonanza in its first nonleague game against a Nevada team. Las Vegas has one more out-of-state game -- at Riverside (Calif.) Poly -- then comes home for a Thursday night game against Cheyenne before beginning region play.

The scheduling is part of a philosophy that first-year coach Chris Faircloth learned from his predecessor at Vegas, UNLV receivers coach Kris Cinkovich.

"It's the unfamiliarity with playing out-of-state teams as opposed to in-state teams," Faircloth said. "It's kids going into more the unknown instead of what they read in the paper or what they know."

Of course, the Utah teams also have that unfamiliarity, and that was likely a big factor in Vegas junior running back Eric Jordan's 459 yards on 57 carries in two games. Jordan has scored six touchdowns so far for the Wildcats.

Faircloth is worried about Bonanza's tight run defense, and Bonanza coach Jay Weinman said that Jordan is their key point of concern.

"We noticed that if you don't swarm him, he's going to bust loose," Weinman said. "We'll keep him, hopefully, to a smaller than usual amount of yardage. He's going to get his, but let's not let him run away with it."

The Wildcats play host to Bonanza at 7 p.m. today at Frank Nails Field at Las Vegas High.

Around town

First off, we're going to look way ahead, all the way to December.

The NIAA announced last week that all state football championships, including the 4A title game, will be played at Sam Boyd Stadium.

It's great to have that title game alternating between Northern and Southern Nevada. It's silly to have championships in any sport (except skiing -- we'll gladly leave that to Lake Tahoe) on just one side of the state every year.

But take a look at the NIAA's wacky bracketing system for the 4A football playoffs. Nevada has only three preps regions, but four teams play for the state title. So, one region gets two teams in the state semifinals on an alternating basis.

This year, that region's the North.

So, we could be looking at a McQueen-Bishop Manogue state championship at Sam Boyd Stadium. How does Reed-Hug sound? Better yet, South Tahoe-Elko?

We'll delve more into this as that scenario approaches. It's still entirely possible -- likely even -- that Sam Boyd will host a great championship game between Foothill and Palo Verde, or Vegas and Bishop Gorman. But maybe, just maybe, it's time to start thinking about adding a third region downstate?

Anyway, on to our short-term predictions, for today's games, all slated for 7 p.m.