Barnes a big reason why Carson is playing for a zone title

In a recent game, Bruce Barnes paces the sideline like a father waiting for his teenage daughter to come from a date with Eminem. He's fuming. He's yelling. Actually, he's screaming--relentlessly.

When senior guard Ricky Correlli turns the ball over unnecessarily in the second half, Barnes glares at his senior point guard in such a way that one would believe Correlli had just kicked Barnes' grandma in the belly.

This is the type of treatment the Senators get when they're winning by 10 points. When they are down by 10, Barnes reacts....not much differently.

"Sometimes it gets to us," Correlli said. "It's a lot of yelling but it's for the good of the team. Without him, we wouldn't be where we are right now."

Where Carson is right now is as surprising as a snowflake in Jamaica.

"I think everybody figured, and I figured, that we would be about a .500 team," said Barnes, whose now in his third season as Carson's varsity coach. "I don't think the players are shocked because they always think they should win. But I'm surprised they've done as well as they've had."

Carson finished the regular season 15-9 and will likely be the Sierra League's No. 2 seed at next week's Northern 4A Regional Tournament. No banners are given out for second place, but someone should make one for Barnes. He returned only one starter (Ryan Henry) from last year's league championship team and has had to play the last three games without him because of a broken index finger. And all three of those games were against the league's other three playoff teams.

Yet, the Senators still had a chance at league title going into the final game of the regular season Friday night against Hug.

"People were coming up to me and telling me that we can win the league," Barnes said. "I told them that if we win the league, they need to rename Morse Burley Gymnasium to Bruce Barnes Gymnasium. We hardly had anybody with any varsity experience (coming back). We have a bunch of seniors but they didn't get much playing time last year. In fact, most of the guys didn't get any playing time."

Here it is. Carson is where its at because of Barnes. The kids, of course, have made the baskets, but Barnes makes his players squeeze the most out of each possession. Talent can be overcome, Barnes says, simply by hard work.

"I was always a very competitive player," said Barnes, who played at Carson High, then at Menlo College in the Bay Area for three years. "I also learned a lot from Pete (Padgett, the current Reno boys coach and Barnes' former coach at Carson). I always learned to make my teams play hard because his teams always did. And I played for an X and O guy in college in (Bob) Williams."

After leaving Menlo College, where he spent one season as a graduate assistant, Barnes came back to Carson and helped coach the Carson High JV team and the middle school team. When Tom Andreasen stepped down as coach of the varsity program after the 1999-2000 season, the position was heavily sought after.

Rob Streeter, now the varsity coach at Dayton High, was the leading candidate. Barnes' current assistant, Rick Garcia, was also a candidate, among several others. Barnes didn't like his chances.

"I was a long shot for this job," Barnes said. "Everybody else's interview was 35 minutes and mine was 2 1/2 hours. I don't know why."

The underdog got the job and Carson has challenged for the league title ever since.

"He's helped us in so many ways and been there for every step," Correlli said.

Barnes probably belongs in the college game, but it'll never happen.

"I've turned down some grad assistant jobs because of my family. The year that I was a grad assistant, I was just gone all the time. Outside the season, if you're not recruiting, you're watching games all the time. Family is too important to me to be away for so long. And you'll see when I do get out of this (high school), it will be because of that. I've just seen it happen to a lot of people. You know, my son (Brian, a ball boy for Carson) plays now and the time I start missing one of his games to come and do this is the time I'll be done. I'm kind of like everybody else, as long as I enjoy going to practice and the games are fun, I'll keep doing it. I like doing it right now. I would like it a lot more if I had a 6-8 guy."

As time expires in Carson's win over North Valleys, it seems as though Barnes has forgotten about Correlli's turnover. For the second time in two hours, Barnes has actually sat down on the seat given to him on the Senator bench.

Correlli just laughs.

"Yeah, we don't say much to him. He just likes winning."

Jeremy Evans is a Nevada Appeal sportswriter.