Dave Maxwell:
Culen Highbe goes high to block a shot in a tournament game for Pahranagat Valley. The Panthers are unbeaten on the season to date. They played Wells on Thursday this week and host in-county rival Lincoln County on Tuesday.
Pahranagat Valley beat all five opponents they faced at last weekend’s Diamondback Classic at Littlefield, Arizona (Beaver Dam) by an average of 37 points.
“The kids played really good defense down there, it was a good team effort,” said coach Mike Strong.
On Friday, the Panthers (10-0) had three lopsided wins beginning with a 53-17 rout of Virgin Valley’s JV team. Tabor Maxwell had 16 points and Culen Highbe had 15. In a 53-14 win over Indian Springs, Maxwell had 14 and Highbe had 12.
The final Friday game was against Liberty Baptist, the team Pahranagat lost to in the championship last year. “This year however,” Strong said, “we got right after them pretty good this time,” and the Panthers cruised to a 72-32 win. Highbe had 14, and Tyson Jorgensen and Kyler Martin had 10.
On Saturday, Highbe led all scorers for the Panthers with 21 points and Maxwell tallied 11 as they rolled over Beatty 57-23 in the semifinals.
In the championship against Sandy Valley, Maxwell scored 20 points, Richard Lewis had 10 and Jorgensen had 11 points to pace PVHS to a 70-34 victory. The Sidewinders came in 5-0 before playing the Panthers.
Sandy Valley had beaten Indian Springs 54-45 in the other semifinal. Beatty defeated Indian Springs 57-37 for third place.
“Our tall back line is tough, and we are getting real good point guard play from Cody Williams,” said Strong. “He did not shoot much at all, but distributed the ball really, really well, getting six or more assists in most of the games.”
He added, “We’ve put together two pretty good tournaments so far and hopefully we’ll continue to improve.”
Games with Calvary Chapel Dec. 13 were cancelled due to a conflict Calvary had, thus the boys had just one game this week, with Wells, on Thursday.
The team closes out the non-league schedule with a game before Christmas and one after Christmas. They host Lincoln County Dec. 20, and go to Lake Mead Dec. 29. Pahranagat beat Lincoln twice last year and also edged Lake Mead once.
After the new year, PVHS has 7 of their 11 remaining games at home. The first league game though is away at Indian Springs Jan. 6. A non-league game follows Jan. 7 at Virgin Valley in Mesquite.
League play continues after that, except for one more non-league game with Mountain View Jan. 28.
The final league game before the playoffs is Feb. 2 with Beaver Dam in Alamo. The league playoffs are Feb. 15-18, and the state tournament is Feb. 24-25 in Las Vegas at a site yet to be determined.
