WLV, Robertson game about more than rivalry
Bragging rights aside, Friday’s prep football regular season finale between city rivals West Las Vegas and Las Vegas Robertson has more to do with playoff longevity than it does painting a few numbers on a gym wall signifying a district championship. At stake is the 2-3A crown, sure. Also on the line is the chance to puff out the chests and claim Meadow City supremacy for a full year — or a few weeks, whichever comes first.
What’s more, it has everything to do with playoff seeding. Pairings come out Sunday; the 2-3A winner likely earns the No. 3 seed while the next two teams fall into a potentially hazardous spot.
The 2-3 seeds can avoid undefeated and top-ranked Hope Christian all the way through to the state championship. The dreaded 4-5 seeds are on the same side of the bracket as the Huskies, as is the No. 8 spot. Worst-case scenario, the third-place team from the district could drop that far.
“We know exactly what this game means,” said West Las Vegas head coach Adrian Gonzales. “For
us, it’s a certain bit of redemption after our quarterfinal last year.”
He’s referring to a Robertson win over the Dons in last year’s playoffs, a stinging defeat that marked postseason rarity in the history of the intracity rivalry. Not since Gonzales was in his playing days at West has the school enjoyed a playoff-ish win like the Cards had in that game.
As Gonzales recalls it, it came during his sophomore year when Robertson won its first eight games and was ranked as high as No. 2 in the state. The Cardinals lost their final two games, the last of them to West Las Vegas in the finale. It sent the Dons to the playoffs as the district runner-up and left the Cardinals home.
“There were about 5,500 fans at Perkins [Stadium] that night and, yeah, that might be the last time we’ve had a city game that had that kind of excitement,” Gonzales said.
It really comes down to this: West Las Vegas (6-3, 3-0) wins the 2-3A title outright with a victory, its first district title in 15 years. A Robertson (7-2, 2-1) win coupled with a St. Michael’s (5-4, 2-1) win in Raton on Friday night forces a three-way tie. In that case, the championship goes to the Horsemen based on the point-differential tiebreaker.
In short, Robertson has already been eliminated from the 2-3A picture. Entering Friday, it’s down to West Las Vegas and St. Michael’s.
Just being in this position is a victory, of sorts, for the Dons. The team has enjoyed steady growth under Gonzales, a former Robertson assistant. Whether its infrastructure or program stability, he feels the two schools are as close to being equal as they have been in decades, if not ever.
“That’s always been the goal since we came here,” he said. “I wouldn’t say we wanted what they did. What we wanted is to put ourselves in the best position and, I think, we’re getting really close.”
The Dons have crafted their own identity apart from Robertson. The offense runs out of the spread and puts the onus on the playmakers. It starts with quarterback John Balizan, a threeyear starter who has shown as much growth between the ears as he has on the scales.
The starter was indoctrinated into the West Las Vegas culture as a seventh-grader when Gonzales and his staff took over and began teaching Balizan the ins and outs of their system. Much of it was gleaned from the old Baylor offense under then-coach Art Briles.
He has passed for 208 yards per game with 23 touchdowns while completing nearly 60 percent of his passes. Behind him he has a two-headed monster at running back in seniors Antonio Bustamante and Darion Williams.
Williams was the feature back two years ago before a knee injury sidelined him last year. Bustamante responded with a huge season in his place. The two are now healthy and have combined for nearly 1,200 yards and 14 touchdowns.
“They’ve made it easy for all of us,” Gonzales said. “They both understand that we can only get one of them the ball, so they’ve both accepted their role as playmakers and do what we need them to do when they have it given to them.”
The Dons are clearly ready to make a little history and the only thing standing in the way is the perennial bully dressed in Cardinals red and black.