Pahranagat Valley boys get past White Pine, Wells

Between the time Christmas ended and school resumed, the Pahranagat Valley boys basketball team won two of the three games they played.

At Alamo Dec. 30, sophomore Cody Williams had 16 points to help the Panthers close out 2014 with a 63-42 win over the White Pine Bobcats.

Jordan Cryts added 13 points for Pahranagat Valley (5-2), which led 18-5 after one quarter. Chris Young scored 20 for White Pine (0-8).

PVHS has held the upper hand with White Pine every year since 2005, winning 14 and losing one. The one loss was in January 2014.

Bobcat coach Charles Hall said Young is the leader and team captain and ?we expect him to come out and have those good games.?

Mike Strong for Alamo said, ?The kids really came together tonight and it was the best game of the season for us so far.?

Against Mountain View Jan. 2, things didn?t go quite so well, as the Panthers had a lot of trouble making shots from the floor and at the foul line. In the end, Mountain View was 14-for-23 at the charity stripe and the Panthers only 5-for-11 and a 49-40 loss to the Saints (8-6). Tevin Grey and Connor LeBoeuf had 16 and 13 points respectively. Jacob Roemer led the Panthers with 12.

But against Wells the next night, things went very well for the Panthers (6-3). They came out with a strong, aggressive, swarming, full-court trapping defense which created numerous turnovers
The result was a 56-20 rout of the Leopards (9-4) who had won four of their last five. Everybody got in the scorebook for PVHS. Five players contributed at least seven points each: Jordan Cryts, Wade Leavitt, Joel Holaday, Shawn Wadsworth and Cody Williams.

Holaday said, ?Coach told us to get after their good guys and keep them from shooting and don?t let them get into the paint.?

Strong said, ?We pressured them a lot because we could see they couldn?t handle the pressure very well which allows you to get after them more and more. The kids came with a lot of energy. We shot the ball much better tonight.?

He said the Panthers (6-3) have a deep bench ?and all the kids can play, plus they rebounded very well in this game. We have been a pretty good rebounding team. That?s probably the one constant we do have and we didn?t turn the ball over as much tonight.?

In the meantime, the Leopards only had three men in the scoring column and managed only seven points in the entire second half.

Coach Robert Woolsey said, ?We were equal the first quarter, but after that my point guard, Matthew Beecher, went out with an injured left hand, then Raul Naranjo rolled his ankle and wasn?t effective after that, and Armando Soriano fouled out at the beginning of the fourth quarter. And, we had expected Alamo to give us a good game. They are well coached and play good, aggressive defense.?

Soriano scored 14 points to lead Wells.

In another note, PVHS Athletic Director Brad Loveday said the NIAA has reinstated Quest Academy of Las Vegas into the Division IV Southern League, bringing it back to a 12-team league.

Bob Northridge, NIAA Southern Coordinator confirmed Quest Academy has completed the required paperwork to have most, but not all, of their players declared eligible.

Quest Academy (2-2), who did not have any games over the Christmas break, is scheduled to play at Pahranagat Valley Jan. 31.