High school basketball: West Jordan hoops features 'impressive' athletes

WEST JORDAN — The odds of doing six consecutive interviews with teenagers who are all engaging and articulate aren't good.

Not good, Mary Swanson of "Dumb and Dumber," like one out of 100? "I'd say more like one out of a million."

But that's what happened inside West Jordan's basketball gymnasium last week.

Four girls basketball players and then two boys basketball players.

None of them said anything earth-shattering, but each of the six confidently stepped up, answered questions and behaved exactly as any coach would have hoped.

And as both West Jordan coaches will quickly tell you, the scene was indicative of Jaguar basketball as a whole.

For the first time during boys coach Scott Briggs' nine-year tenure, his squad doesn't have a team GPA of 3.5 or above. Still, at 3.38, it remains very good. And on the girls team, two of the players will be nominated for academic All-State

"These kids are impressive kids," said girls coach Carlson Boudreaux.

Though the situation may be different for each team — West Jordan's boys squad is a perennial state contender, while the girls squad hopes to get back to the 5A tournament after missing out a year ago — both West Jordan basketball programs will hope to win games this season with those kinds of athletes.

Heading into the Christmas moratorium, here's a closer look at both:

BOYS: Unlike most other basketball programs around the state, West Jordan's boys team doesn't set a goal each year to win a region or state title.

Instead, the objective, which has been at the core of West Jordan's hugely successful run during this decade, is a lot more basic.

"Our goal is the same as it always is — we're hoping to leave practice today a little bit better than when we walked in," said Briggs. "That sounds almost like, 'Oh, that's a textbook answer,' but we try to live it. And we think, it we take care of that, by the end of the season, we'll be playing the best basketball that we can play, which, with the kids we have this season, we feel like we can make some noise."

His players, it appears, have bought in. When casually asked what their team goals are for the season, both Tanner Connors and Jordan Weirick echoed Briggs' sentiments about simply trying to improve day-by-day.

The way Weirick sees it, taking that approach has helped the Jags remain focused.