Friday, Feb. 11, 2005 | 10:18 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
Don't let all those 57-53 losses by the ploddin' Rebels fool you. Up-tempo basketball isn't dead around here, although you might have to drive to the darkness on the edge of town to find it.
That would be where the three-time defending state champion Centennial girls hoop it up. In back-to-back games just before Christmas, the Bulldogs won by NASA-like scores of 109-24 and 112-28. That seemed so implausible, given the quarters in high school basketball last only eight minutes, that I made a mental note to check out this scoring machine in person.
But in that I've never been to the desert on a horse with no name, the pilgrimage to Las Vegas' distant northwest side was indefinitely postponed. Then about 10 days ago, Centennial beat somebody 112-26 and somebody else 91-24 and I decided that on the next slow night, I would pack up the burro and go.
On Wednesday, the 9-11 Rebels were hosting 10-12 Missouri at the Thomas & Mack Center. I guess it doesn't get much slower than that. It also was a clear night, so you could follow the little star over Bethlehem, or at least Mojave High, where Centennial was playing.
As the teams lined up for the opening tip, I mistook Mojave for Centennial, because it looked bigger and stronger. It also had about a dozen players on the bench. Centennial had three.
But six minutes into the game, Centennial led 22-4.
It's hard to describe the Bulldogs' style, because I've never seen girls play at such a frenetic pace. If Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble and that bunch at Loyola-Marymount wore their hair in ponytails, I guess that is what it might have looked like.
The last time I saw girls move like that was in high school when the only bathroom in our house became vacant and my kid sisters raced to try out their new curling irons.
The first quarter reminded me of those old Harlem Globetrotters cartoons, where the ball would keep spinning through the basket and the numbers on the scoreboard would keep spinning in unison until the scoreboard blew up.
With that big lead, it wasn't long before Centennial ran out of ways to challenge itself. Or became bored. So Mojave's scoreboard didn't blow up. One of the Centennial fans told me I was jinxing the team, because the 83-57 victory was not one of its better efforts.
Statistically, in that the Bulldogs average 85 points while allowing just 45, I guess it wasn't. But I was impressed nonetheless, and I wasn't the only one. It's not often the public address announcer cries "nice dish" and "there she g-o-o-es," when it's the visiting team doing the dishing and running.
When healthy, Centennial dresses 10 players, and four of them have been playing on the varsity since they were ninth-graders, when they led the Bulldogs to their first state title. That was also the first time a team from the south had won the championship in 22 years, and so you didn't have to be Pat Summitt to figure out these girls were on the verge of something special.
Their coach, Karen Weitz, spends most of the game scowling like Tennessee's Summit. She's intense, but thoughtful, too, as a discussion after the game revealed.
Weitz, who spent four years at Cheyenne before taking over at Centennial when it opened, has sort of a Zen-like, Phil Jackson approach to coaching basketball. For starters, she doesn't keep stats, or at least share them with the media. On Wednesday night, she didn't even keep score.
When I asked how many 3-pointers the Bulldogs made, she said she didn't know, because she didn't bring a scorekeeper. Or a scorebook.
Maybe that's why her girls play so unselfishly. If nobody keeps track of points, it probably lessens the urgency to score them.
Likewise, Weitz didn't know her record at Centennial off-hand, although you can count the losses on two hands. But she did help me figure it out and we came up with 183-10. Centennial's only loss this year was 79-75 to Dallas Lincoln, which was ranked as high as No. 4 in USA Today's national girls poll. Centennial this week checked in at No. 22.
Naturally, all that success has created a good bit of resentment among Centennial's rivals. Weitz is criticized for running up the score, for keeping her players in the gym year-round and more recently, for good players from other parts of town winding up on her doorstep. You get the impression that none of this bothers her, but she says her players do have a hard time being loathed like advanced algebra class.
She has to keep telling them it's nothing personal, it's just those three state championship banners hanging on the wall.
"I think that's human nature and we talk to the kids about that," Weitz said. "They say 'nobody wants us to win anymore.' So I put it back on them. I ask 'What do you do? Do you ever cheer for underdogs? Do you want the same team to win all the time?' And they say 'No, I guess not.'
"I tell them nobody wants to see the Lakers win again or the Bulls win again, either."
Not that long ago, nobody wanted to see the Durango High boys win again. If there's anybody who can relate to what Weitz and the Centennial girls are experiencing, it's Al LaRocque, who built a similar dynasty at Durango when it opened.
LaRocque, who also helps coach the Durango girls now that his daughters are old enough to play, seems more impressed by Centennial's success rather than put off by it.
"They are just so much better than anybody," he said. "They set the standard. The year-round in the gym thing is a big factor ... and they might get accused of recruiting, but it's like, 'if you build it, they will come,' and so the good players just tend to gravitate to that program. That's the situation we had with our boys.
"Not only do they have the good players, but she (Weitz) is prepared to beat you. Like when we play them, she'll double-team our best player (LaRocque's ninth-grade daughter Lindy) and take that anyway. You still have to coach good players, and they still have to live in your district and stay eligible, and that's what some people forget."
With the four players -- Whitney Price, Sierra Chambers, Ashley Blake and Jordyn Bowen -- who formed the nucleus of that first state title team as ninth-graders and a fifth senior, Whitley Cox, winding down their careers, it appears that Centennial's championship streak may be ending.
Then again, it might not. In junior forward Kristina Kline and sophomore guard Italee Lucas, who could be Weitz's first big-time NCAA Division I player, Centennial will have a couple of solid returners around which to rebuild.
Or reload.
When I asked Weitz if she had any players on the junior varsity capable of replacing the ones that are graduating, I think I even detected the faintest hint of a smile.
Maybe that's because the Centennial JV has lost only one game, too.
archive
