Rancho shoots for the stars without having a star shooter

Nick Christensen

Monday, Feb. 14, 2005 | 9:35 a.m.

The "streets" between the rows of portable classrooms at Rancho High School may be named for famous roads in Hollywood, but keep going down Santa Monica Boulevard and into Rancho's gym and you'll be hard-pressed to find one star.

But as boys' basketball practice got under way Friday inside the gym at the muddy Rancho campus, the Northeast's second seed got ready to host a playoff game a year after losing in the first round of the playoffs.

The Rams will play the Southeast's No. 3 team, Coronado, tonight as the Sunrise Region boys' quarterfinals tip off at 6:30 p.m. The Sunset Region girls' quarterfinals begin at the same time.

"We're an average team with overachievers," Rams coach Melvin Shivers said. "Nobody really thought anything about Rancho. But as the season went on, we started beating quality teams."

The Rams finished 20-5 this year, three of those losses coming to sixth-ranked Valley. Yet Rancho's leading scorer, guard Ariece Perkins, is averaging just 12.3 points per game.

"We play a team game. Each one of five boys can hit in double figures, and most games we lost, we didn't lose by much," Shivers said.

The spark went off after the Rams won the Marana (Ariz.) tournament in December.

"We came back to Vegas real high," Shivers said. "We wanted to be selfish at times; we'd get the lead, the lead would dwindle. But each night it's a different guy."

Increasingly, the guy's been Kaylone Riley, a tall senior who didn't really catch on with the varsity program until this year.

Shivers said Riley's averaging seven blocks a game on top of the 6.8 rebounds he contributes.

"He's going to take us as far as he can take us," he said. "He's definitely really been outstanding."

Once around town

The Pioneers' leading scorer averaged 21 points a game this year before mysteriously disappearing from action last week. Canyon Springs lost to seventh-ranked Rancho and 6-20 Las Vegas, falling from second in the Northeast Division to fourth.

The big question for Sunrise coaches and players this week was -- what's wrong with Pattillo and will he be back?

"He's feeling better," Pioneers coach Daryl Branham said. "It's just going to be a day-to-day thing. If he's going to be feeling well enough to play, we just have to take it from there."

Branham said it was "some type of flu" that sidelined his star. But in the process, it forced the other players on the Canyon Springs bench to step up to try to fill the void. While they struggled against Las Vegas, the Pioneers did stay within nine points of Rancho last Friday.

Eldorado played with an ineligible player last Thursday against Desert Pines, forfeiting that game and giving Canyon Springs the tiebreaker for the third seed from the Northeast. But word got out slowly, and when reached Sunday night, Silverado coach Rob Pisano said he didn't even know who his Skyhawks were scheduled to play tonight.

"I figure we're going to show up and hopefully not worry about the other team," he said. "If we play four quarters, we're going to beat whoever we play. Hopefully our guys are going to give us four quarters."

Meanwhile, Green Valley coach Adam Patai had to change his plans from Pattillo and the Pioneers to Davell Jackson and Eldorado.

"We had been preparing for Canyon Springs, but we did have some things on Eldorado because going into the last week or two it was up in the air who was going to finish where," he said.

Just to recap -- that's Canyon Springs at Silverado and Eldorado at Green Valley, both at 6:30 tonight.

"I don't think it's a game we can win," he said. "I just want to compete. The first time we played, they beat us 93-33. That was our first game of the season. We were mostly afraid of their name, not because of how they played."

The Chargers are in the playoffs for the first time in six years, thanks in part to the play of guard Tenica Braxton. Morrow said the fact that many of his division losses were single-digit defeats is a sign of progress for his program.

"We wanted to get out of the same side of Centennial," he said. "We feel we have the talent to actually meet them for the championship."

Green said he thinks speed is the biggest difference between his team and the 26-1 Gaels.

"We've got to get our quickness to be in front of them, not just rely on guards and put pressure on other guards," he said.