Riverton hobbles in to 5A title game

WEST VALLEY CITY — When Riverton's Eric Dearden twisted his ankle pretty severely early last week, his status for the state tournament — along with Riverton's title hopes — was in question.

As well as Dearden has been hobbling around the E Center this week, you'd never know his ankle was taped up heavily.

On the heels of two impressive performances earlier this week, Dearden enjoyed perhaps the game of his life Friday, scoring 19 points to lead Riverton to a 53-47 victory over Hillcrest and a berth in Saturday's 5A championship.

Dearden's biggest moment came with 17 seconds remaining. Hillcrest's Donnie Lao had just drilled a 3-pointer to trim Riverton's lead to 49-47, its slimmest lead since 5-3 early in the game, and Dearden stepped to the line and calmly buried both free throws.

"It was weird, I just zoned out, I didn't really hear anything," said Dearden. "I did it yesterday (too), and I'd never had that happen before, I usually hear the crowd. I just thought in my head, 'I've done this a 1,000 times.' "

Those free throws secured Riverton its first state championship game appearance.

The Silver Wolves will face Bingham at 5 p.m.

"Combine the history of Hillcrest, Davis and Bingham, and here we are in our seventh year, this is a cool thing for our school," said Riverton coach Steve Galley.

Dearden finished with 19 points on 6-of-7 shooting from the field, and 5-of-6 shooting from the line to spoil Hillcrest's improbable run toward a state title.

After a season-opening blowout loss to Riverton, Hillcrest proceeded to win 19 straight regular season games, and were a very confident squad heading into Friday's semifinal.

Even though the Huskies' confidence never wavered, as evidence by their fourth-quarter rally, that confidence couldn't prevent them from falling behind early.

Leading 5-3 early in the first, Riverton pushed that lead to 10-3 with all seven points coming after offensive rebounds. The Wolves increased the lead to 11 in the second quarter before the resilient Huskies whittled it back to 20-16 by the half.

"I loved our first-half defense," said Galley. "Even though our offense sputtered, how can you complain about holding Hillcrest to 16 points."

Defense and rebounding were realistically the key for Riverton. In Hillcrest's quarterfinal win over Northridge, the Huskies grabbed 18 offensive rebounds.