Girls basketball: Vaqueros open tournament against South Tahoe

Robert Perea, The Fernley Reporter

The Fernley High School girls basketball team sets out in seek of its second straight Northern 3A region championship Thursday afternoon.

The Vaqueros open the tournament Thursday as the No. 4 seed from the West Division of the Northern 3A. They may be entering the tournament as an underdog, but they’ve been competitive with each of the teams they could face in the first two rounds of the tournament.

Their first-round game is at 2:45 p.m. Thursday at the Winnemucca Events Center against South Tahoe, the No. 1 seed from the West. The first time the teams met this season, on Dec. 8, the Vaqueros blitzed the Vikings 23-5 in the first quarter on the way to a 66-34 win. They were led in that game by Jasmyne Torres, who has since been lost for the season with an injury.

If they beat the Vikings, the Vaqueros would play either Spring Creek, the No. 2 seed from the East, or Wooster, the No. 3 team from the West. The Vaqueros split two games with Spring Creek that each went down to the last shot, and they beat Wooster 44-35 on Jan. 24.

With the 2020-21 season being canceled, the Vaqueros are still the defending Northern 3A champion, having won the 2020 tournament in Fallon.

The Vaqueros wound up tied for third with Elko with a 5-5 record in the East Division, but lost the tiebreaker for the third seed because they lost a pair of close games to the Indians, but that seeding favors the Vaqueros, because it puts them on the opposite side of the bracket from Lowry, which dominated the East Division and finished 10-0.

The Vaqueros finished the regular season in style, with a 53-15 win at Dayton last Saturday. They dominated the game from the start, outscoring the DustDevils 15-2 in the first quarter and 18-2 in the second.

Aly Sullivan and LaShay Stephens led the Vaqueros with seven points each, as all 11 players scored. Jaelece Wasson and Haeley Diehl both had six points.