Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005 | 9:21 a.m.
The game was 363 days ago, but the memories are still fresh at Bishop Gorman High.
It was Feb. 17, 2004 at the Bishop Gorman gym when Northwest three-seeded Cheyenne came in and embarrassed the Gaels, handing them a 69-45 loss.
"We talked about it quite a bit, but we haven't really brought it up this week," Gaels coach Grant Rice said. "The kids know. Many of our guys were on that team and learned from it."
Now, Gorman comes into the Sunset Region quarterfinals as the top seed from the Southwest Division, hosting Mojave at 6:30 tonight.
The Gaels have yet to lose to a team from Nevada and haven't had a real challenge since traveling to California last month, but thanks in part to last year's struggles, Gorman's players know they have to find a way to get excited for tonight's game.
"It's not easy to get up, but it's one-and-done," forward C.J. Portz said. "If you don't get up, you're finished. An easy game is a potential loss. We've always got to come out 100 percent and not play to their level."
Gaels guard Kashif Watson, who leads his team in scoring with 19.9 points a game this year, said he looks at tonight's contest as a way to set the tone for the rest of the playoffs.
"We've got five games to do what we have to do," Watson said. "We have to come out with fire. Our goal is for a state championship, and can't nothing stop us from doing that. We feel we can't be stopped, and we've got five seniors left to prove we're state champs."
Once Around Town
"Fortunately for me, last year's coach was a first seed, and we lost in the first round to a fourth seed," McCoy said. "It's pretty easy to get them up, because they know what happens when they're not ready to play."
Last year, it was Coronado pulling off a 48-35 upset at Las Vegas. This year, an upstart Basic team looks to fill the upset role in tonight's Sunrise Region quarterfinal.
"It's kind of a survival game," he said. "Every team you play, they're going to play as hard as they can for the whole game. The worst thing to happen when you get down is kids get nervous."
The Wildcats will face a Basic team that is an enigma to the Las Vegas coaching staff. McCoy said he did get to scout the Wolves once -- when they played winless Del Sol.
"We don't know that much about them," McCoy said. "I know they have those two sisters (Amber and Ashley Purdie) that play pretty good. They press a little bit, but we don't know that much about them."
Desert Pines, which eventually made it to the state semifinals, beat Green Valley 66-60 on Feb. 20 last year. But this season, Green Valley's the home team in the quarterfinals.
The Gators have come up big against very talented teams -- including a 47-38 loss to Centennial that was the Bulldogs' closest local game this year -- but struggled in the holiday tournaments.
"We're doing the same thing, taking no chances. If we're not ready by now, we'll never be," Gators coach Alma Randolph said. "We're just taking things one day at a time and doing the same things we've been doing all the time."
The Gators are led by guard Jabrenta Hubbard, a high-scoring threat who Randolph said has tried this year to involve her teammates more.
"When you say progress, she's tried to make her team better," Randolph said. "She practices the way she plays on the floor. She works hard."
Durango was slated to play Cheyenne in a nonleague game last month, but nonleague contests were canceled due to the Friday afternoon snowstorm, and the two never made the date up.
The teams will make it up tonight in a game that actually means something, with the winner going to Thursday's Sunset semifinal at Mojave.
"This weekend as a staff we discussed that," Durango coach Al LaRocque said. "It would have been nice to know what we're going against. But on the other hand, there's an element of surprise. They don't know what we're about either."
LaRocque, who had one brief break Monday between school, practice and helping coach in Durango's girls' quarterfinal loss to Palo Verde, said having lost that game is a mixed bag.
"Basketball-wise, there's no secrets this time of year," he said. "But on the other hand, there's nothing like seeing a team in person."
"Two weeks ago we looked at it, and we were tied for fifth place," Desert Shield coach Larry Johnson said. "I've seen crazier things happen."
While it wasn't as complicated as the Southwest's three-way tie for second place, no Northwest team clinched a playoff berth until Wednesday and the fourth seed wasn't settled until Friday night.
Johnson said the down-to-the-wire play gives Northwest teams an advantage heading into this week's playoffs.
"It helped us all, it made us all better teams," he said. "With the division being so competitive, you had to play every night. You didn't have a night off at all. From No. 1 to No. 6, all the games were competitive every night."
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