R-C Sports Notebook: Familiar foe coming to town for first round of playoffs

Come on, McQueen? Again?

Entering last week's final round of regular season football games, the chance was obviously there that the Lancers could be coming to town for the first round of the regional playoffs.

But in order for that to happen, McQueen was going to have to lose a team it had never lost to and Douglas was going to have to lose to a team it hadn't lost to since 2001.

Both schools lost.

So here we are, with Douglas and McQueen facing off again. Douglas has qualified for the playoffs 13 times since 1996 and this will be the fifth time the Tigers will have met up with the Lancers.

Don't get me wrong, the teams have had some amazing battles in the last few years (I'm betting that the fog from 2006 will make a return -- although with a 10 percent chance of humidity, probably not). It's just, you'd like to see a team like Spanish Springs or North Valleys come to town for a change - just for a change of scenery.

We've seen Reed the past two years, McQueen in 2006 and 2005 (and the '04 semifinals for that matter), Manogue in '04 Round 1, Galena twice, Elko twice, McQueen twice more and Wooster once.

13 first-round games, six opponents. OK, so that's not that bad. If you throw in Reno and Hug from 2003, I guess we've seen most everyone you'd expect to see in the playoffs over the years.

I'll take it all back, this was all just an elaborate way of filling some space at the top of the column.

You never want to lead with a loss, but I badly underestimated what the Carson High football team has this year. With the way they played Thursday night against Douglas, they could have beaten any team in the region - possibly the state. They are big and strong across both lines and devistatingly fast at every skill position. They built their entire season toward that game, though, so they really, really need to avoid the emotional letdown this week.

The crazy thing is, you might look at the scoreboard after the game and think Douglas simply didn't show up. But that's not the case. Douglas actually played a fundamentally-sound football game. They didn't lose any fumbles, didn't throw any interceptions and were only penalized four times. It wasn't even a poorly-played game on the Tigers' part. It's that the Senators outplayed them by that much.

Here's the top positive to take out of last week:

- The Douglas football team is coming off its worst loss since October 2008, but the upside is that the McQueen squad coming to Minden for the first round is reeling from a huge scare at home against Reno and a loss to Spanish Springs.

Both teams are going to be looking to right the ship this week, but you have to figure that Douglas got its butterflies out of the way in the disastrous first half at McQueen in Week 3. If the Tigers of that game's second-half show up, Douglas could be looking at its first playoff win since 2004.

I'm planning to be at these games this week, so check online for updates (Cover It Live is the tool we use to post automatic updates during games and also allows for comments and questions from fans during the game, so be sure to check out our Web site if you can't make it to the games I will be posting from.):

Wednesday: Douglas vs. Galena boys' soccer (at Damonte Ranch), 5 p.m. (Cover It Live)

Thursday: Douglas vs. Galena girls' soccer (at Damonte Ranch), 5 p.m. (Cover It Live)

Friday: Douglas vs. McQueen football, 7 p.m. (Cover It Live)

Saturday: Soccer and Volleyball regional championships (at Damonte and Manogue respectively if Douglas advances). (Cover It Live).

- Took the freeway through Carson for the first time Saturday morning ... very nice. Easily took 15 minutes off the trip to Reno.

- Carson sophomore Dylan Sawyers certainly made a statement Thursday night, rushing for over 100 yards and scoring three times. But I was told afterward that as a freshman he put up more than 500 all-purpose yards against the Tiger freshmen last year (although about 200 were called back on penalties). He's going to be very strong the next two years.

- That's not to say Douglas doesn't have a stud or two on the way. Conner Peterson (younger brother to Jake and Brock) has been making a lot noise down at the freshman level. He had two touchdowns, including a long kick return, against Carson in a 25-7 win on Wednesday.

- The Tiger boys' soccer team has now played in three overtime playoff games over its past four playoff-qualifying seasons. All three were wins. Don't tell me some of that big-game experience isn't being passed down.

- "Barnburner - noun - someone who burns down a barn," from thefreedictionary.com, def. 2.

- How tough is it to play for Oregon? Not only do you have to spend all year trying to maintain superhuman size and speed - not to mention keep a Division I playbook straight - you also have to somehow keep up with all the uniform combinations.

The team, just in case you were wondering, has 384 game-day combinations.

Speaking of uniforms, how good would the Douglas Tiger look wearing the University of Cincinnati Bearcats' template?

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Beats me what is happening here, but the computer keeps making my picks for me, even when I make extra-special sure to save my picks. I'll try it again this week, if it does the same thing, I may give up!

Congratulations to Kathy Robbins, who picked a perfect 11 out of 13 games correctly last week.

Here are my picks for week 9:

Falcons over Redskins

Bears over Cardinals

Bengals over Ravens

Texans over Colts

Jaguars over Chiefs

Patriots over Dolphins

Packers over Bucs

Saints over Panthers

Seahawks over Lions

Giants over Chargers

49ers over Titans

Steelers over Broncos

Tiebreakers: Cowboys 21, Eagles 14

Last week: 8-5. Season: 79-37. Season Survivor: Out.

Celebrating Edd Roush, the only player ever ejected from a Major League Baseball game for sleeping in the outfield.

- Most of you probably heard about this already, but Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach blamed his team's blowout loss to Texas A&M two weeks ago on his players' "fat little girlfriends."

Just ignore measuring the political correctness of the statement (not to mention the oxymoron) for a second - Blame it on the weather, the refs, the field conditions, the time keeper, the play-calling, the effort, the other team's 384 uniform combinations or the weird mascots ... I don't really care. Just, whatever it is, blame it on something that actually had something to do with the game.

- It's OK, Philadelphia Phillies, I don't trust my bullpen either. It can barely handle the slam dunks like "E.R.A.S." and "Naps on the couch," much less closing things out against heart of the lineup. Sure, I had a lousy start, my word count is already at 1,494, but I'm sticking with me right up until A-Rod clobbers me over the head with his bat.