5A girls basketball championship: Syracuse capture school's first state title with perfect season

TAYLORSVILLE — The Syracuse Titans proved they had the best 5A girls basketball team in the state.

With their 24th victory of the season — and no losses — they snared them a state title by beating Pleasant Grove 62-49 in the championship game at Salt Lake Community College.

"Everyone thought we were gonna choke. We wanted this win big time," said sophomore Brittney Martin, who finished the game with a stat-sheet filling 15 points, eight steals, three rebounds and three assists. And she spent plenty of timing trying to slow down Pleasant Grove's 6-foot-6 center Jennifer Hamson on the defensive end.

"We heard all year we were in a soft region. There were questions about how good we really were. The girls took on a personal goal to go out every night and prove we were the best team in the state," said Syracuse coach Rob Reisbeck, who feels his team has finally proven to the rest of the state just how good it is.

The Titans have done it with defense all year long. They force turnovers and get into a running competition with the other team. Pleasant Grove wanted to keep them in the half court. Syracuse won that battle as they forced 28 turnovers on 21 steals, breaking much of the game. And they played defense a little differently than most teams do against the Vikings.

"We said coming in that we were going to let Jen (Hamson) get hers and keep everyone else in check," said Reisbeck, who kept tight reign on the other players and left Hamson on single coverage most of the time, much of it fronted by Martin, who picked off eight balls, many coming into the post.

Hamson definitely did get hers by scoring 32 points and grabbing 14 boards, but the rest of the team had a tough time breaking down the Titan defense.

"We had too many secondary turnovers where we'd break the press ad then panic and turn it over," said Pleasant Grove coach Glenn Larson, who was proud of the way his team battled with the state champs and had them within six with not much time left on the clock.

But they just couldn't get any closer than that and started fouling with almost two minutes left on the clock to try to bring it closer.

Tournament MVP and Army-bound Jennifer Hazlett would have none of that, as though her outside shot wasn't falling all game long, she was plenty busy inside, filling up the stat sheet with 27 points, seven rebounds, five assists and five steals, simply doing it all to earn her team the victory.