Cheyenne faces early test

Cheyenne players and coaches were all smiles Saturday night as their team finished off Durango to claim this year's Southern Zone boys basketball title.

After seeing the pairings for the first round of this week's 4A Nevada state tournament, those smiles may have turned into looks of concern.

The No. 1 Desert Shields won't have a cakewalk when they step onto the floor Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. Instead, they'll be up against 22-7 South Tahoe, considered by many to be the top team in Northern Nevada this season and the same club that eliminated Cheyenne in the first round last year.

Unexpected losses to Reed and Sparks in last weekend's Northern Zone tournament dropped the favored Vikings from a top seed into the fourth slot.

That sets up an interesting matchup between South Tahoe's controlled, slow-down style and Cheyenne's up-tempo, pressure-oriented game.

"They'll try to control the tempo by holding the ball and running lots of screens," Desert Shields coach Larry Johnson said. "But I don't think it really matters at this point who we're playing. The bottom line is we just have to win."

Durango coach Al LaRocque admitted his team is glad to avoid the Vikings in the first round, but said beating Sparks won't be an easy task, either.

"Tahoe is well coached and if you give them two or three days to prepare for you, they should be able to put together a good game plan," LaRocque said. "The other side of it is that Sparks did beat them for a reason."

Another promising first-round contest has Cimarron-Memorial taking on Northern Zone champion Galena. The game will feature a head-to-head battle between two of the state's top senior point guards -- Spartan Marcus Banks and the Grizzlies' Lance Buoncristiani.

"It's going to be a war between them," Cimarron coach Hank Girardi said.

In the fourth first-round boys game, Clark and senior guard Kevin Gaines will try to get past Reed, a team that goes 6-9, 6-8, 6-7 across the front line. The Chargers have virtually no size inside, but Clark should have a quickness edge at nearly every position.

On the girls side, Bishop Gorman's semifinal loss to Las Vegas may have a silver lining. By winning the third-place game against Basic Saturday, the Gaels managed to avoid northern powers McQueen and Carson in the first round.

Basic will have the unenviable task of trying to stop three-time defending champion McQueen on Wednesday. To make matters worse for the locals, the Wolves are expected to be without injured point guard Rana Brown.

Like the Cheyenne boys, the Silverado girls received a tough first-round assignment after claiming the Southern Zone title. The Skyhawks will open against Carson, ranked No. 4 in the final Sun state poll.

Las Vegas, which stunned Gorman and took Silverado to the wire over the weekend, gets Elko, last year's 4A runner-up, in the first round.

* MCDONALD'S NOMINEES: Along with Gaines and Banks, area seniors Shunnon Atkinson (Rancho), Jason Burns (Durango), Demetrius Hunter (Cheyenne) and Brian Lang (Cimarron) have been nominated for the prestigious 1999 McDonald's High School All-American Basketball Team.

The final selections were scheduled to be announced today at 2 p.m.

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