Basketball: Rivalry matchup tonight

After a much-anticipated matchup during the football season, Carson and Douglas High school will be meeting up again for a high-stakes league game in Minden tonight - this time in basketball.

The boys' game, which begins at 7 p.m., pits teams with identical 5-1 records in league play. The winner will take over sole possession of second place heading into the second half of league play.

The girls' game, starting at 5:15 p.m., features a strong Carson squad (4-2 in league play) against a Douglas team coming off a narrow loss to unbeaten Manogue.

Douglas High administrators are recommending spectators arrive early, as they will begin turning people away when the gym is filled to capacity.

"This is that game every year that everyone in the program talks about," Douglas boys' coach Corey Thacker said. "The freshman team talks about it, the junior varsity guys talk about it.

"The intensity is there no matter what level you're at. It's a great, competitive rivalry. You know going in that both teams go as hard as they can. No matter what the records are, you know each team is going to come with their best."

The boys' game sets up as one of the most even matchups in several years.

Douglas has won 10 of the last 11 meetings between the two schools, but this year's teams have comparable overall records (Douglas is 10-7, Carson is 10-4) and share a common opponent in their respective league losses (Manogue).

"Carson is playing some great basketball right now," Thacker said. "We went up and watched them at South Tahoe the other night. They just run their stuff so well.

"It's all about execution with them. They like to run their specific sets and they stick to those. It'll be huge trying to stop them and understanding what we need to do. They are always well prepared and we expect the same Friday."

Douglas is coming off its first loss to a Northern Nevada opponent of the season last weekend, an 83-60 setback at Manogue.

Despite the 23-point loss, Douglas led for most of the game, including late in the third quarter.

"The kids understand what happened in that game, so hopefully that'll help us out," Thacker said. "I'm proud of how they've bounced back this week and refocused. They know what was working last weekend and they know why it went wrong.

"Right now, our biggest thing is trying to find someone to step up and be a leader, vocally and physically. That is the one thing we are still looking for as a team. They are working really hard and I think the Manogue game kind of lit a fire under them."

On the girls' side, the Lady Tigers took one of their biggest steps forward Saturday, falling just short at Manogue, 53-51.

The team faced tragedy just a day later as it learned that sophomore forward Ebony Cleveland's father, Jonathan, had died.

"It puts basketball in perspective," Douglas girls' coach Werner Christen said. "We didn't practict on Monday, just met as a team. It's been really tough on the whole group. They are really close and they are there for each other."

Christen added the team wasn't going to practice on Thursday in order to attend Jonathan Cleveland's memorial service.

"Today we're going to worry about Ebony and take care of her. She's part of our family and its just a terrible loss."

The Tigers will have to regroup Friday for the matchup with the upstart Senators.

"They're just a great team," Christen said. "They are confident and they are playing tremendous basketball right now. They're seniors are playing well and they have some strong players inside.

"I'm very impressed with what they have."

Even with Saturday's loss to Manogue, Christen said his team found plenty of positives to build on.

"I'm not much of a moral victory guy, but that was a situation where the kids realized that if they do the little things and play like they can, they are going to be very competitive," he said. "They saw that they can pick up some of these games down the stretch. It was an important lesson to learn."

The loss itself could very well have been a win without a lucky bounce here or there.

"We didn't play great down the stretch, like in the last minute and a half, and we made a couple mistakes," Christen said. "Manogue got a putback toward the end to win it that was off one of those double rim bouncers. Their kid happened to be there and time it right and that was it.

"We've had really close games like that all year, but the bottom line was we haven't made the stops when we needed to, or we haven't made the conversion when we needed to. Manogue, it was nice to see us play that well. We did everything but win. That's the next step."