LAS VEGAS HOLIDAY CLASSIC NOTEBOOK / PAUL McLEOD : Fear and Loathing on Basketball Trail

Due west of the infamous Strip, a slow climb up Tropicana Boulevard into the painted desert of southern Nevada, there’s rarely a hint that you are anywhere near Las Vegas.

On this western rise overlooking Glitter Gulch, regular people go to work and send their kids to schools that are popping up everywhere.

There are no major casinos in the suburbs, although the city glows in the distance at night.

This is the setting for the Holiday Prep basketball tournament. Las Vegas Durango High, one of five schools built here since 1990, is a state-of-the-art campus with athletic facilities that would make many Orange County schools jealous.

Among the amenities are two air-conditioned gymnasiums, including the main court that seats about 4,000, a lighted football stadium with a track, lighted baseball stadium, tennis courts and enough locker rooms, it seems, to house the entire student body of 3,160.

Just across Rainbow Avenue in a dusty tract yet to be developed is Sawyer Middle School. Its athletic facilities mirror Durango on a slightly smaller scale (there are no lights on its fields), the school gymnasium seats about 2,000.

Mater Dei Coach Gary McKnight sat in the Durango auxiliary gym after an early tournament game and marveled at the surroundings.

“Aren’t these great facilities?” he asked. “What we wouldn’t give for this.”

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Santa Ana Valley has had a miserable time lately. First, the Falcons, who have some of the best talent in Orange County, lost 6-4 guard Olujimi Mann due to a sprained left ankle before the tournament began. Then 6-0 guard Michael Saunders suffered a slight shoulder separation in the tournament opener.

If that wasn’t enough, the Falcons drew the final game on the first night--a 10:30 p.m. start--at Sawyer Middle School. But two overtime games held previously during the ambitious 11-game schedule at Sawyer pushed back the Valley starting time to about 11:30 p.m. Valley lost to Bakersfield South, 66-54.

“By the time we got the kids something to eat and got them back to the hotel, it was 2:30 in the morning,” a frustrated Coach Kevin Stipp said.

Then on Tuesday, the Falcons were beaten by Oakland Fremont, 69-59.

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The 69 referees come from nine states, from as far away as New York. Thirty of them are from the Southern Nevada Officiating Assn.

But curiously enough, three officials from Orange County worked Mater Dei’s victories Tuesday night and Wednesday.

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The tournament has been big news in Nevada. In some early editions of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the event has received front-page coverage. It even got more space than the retirement of the jerseys of Stacey Augmon and Larry Johnson at Nevada Las Vegas, an event that brought Jerry Tarkanian back to the Thomas & Mack Center for the first time since he left the university in 1992.