5A high school basketball: Fired up by Fremont's fans, Hawks soar to semifinal win

OGDEN — It's not that the Alta Hawks needed any more motivation, playing in a state semifinal game and all.

But they got a little extra burst of adrenaline when they left the Dee Events Center following their quarterfinal victory on Wednesday. A large group of Fremont students, after the Silver Wolves won their quarterfinal game, told the Hawks what their team was going to do to them in Friday's semifinal.

It backfired. Alta was locked in from the opening tip and led for almost the entire game in a 48-37 victory over Fremont on Friday. The Hawks will play Davis in the 5A championship game today at 1:30 p.m.

"We exited the building, only to be met by about 500 students from Fremont giving it to us — 'We're going to kick your this and that,' " said Alta coach Jim Barker. "From that moment on, we were focused. It made it real easy to stay focused."

Obviously, Fremont's fans weren't the ones defending and trying to score on the Hawks in the semis, but they may have impacted Friday's game.

"And understand in no way does that reflect their team, they were very good and hard-nosed," Barker said. "But their students challenged our kids, so now all the sudden our kids were ready to play."

The Hawks showed how hungry they were to play on defense. They held Fremont to 30 percent shooting in the second half and didn't allow any Silver Wolves to score in double figures. Fremont shot 1-for-9 from 3-point range.

Fremont did hang with Alta for much of the first three quarters. The Silver Wolves seemed to have the game's momentum going into the fourth, as they scored the final six points of the third period and trailed 33-30.

But the Hawks, as they've done all season, turned their play and especially their defense up a notch in the fourth quarter. They opened the fourth on a 12-0 run. Fremont missed its first six shots and committed three turnovers in the fourth period, and didn't make a basket until Jason Lema scored a layup with 1:31 left in the game.

"That's just what this team does," said Alta center Kyle Davis, who filled up the stat sheet with 16 points, four rebounds, four steals, three blocked shots and three assists. "We've been able to lock down in the fourth quarter. As you know, like you guys (the media) talk about a lot, we have a lot of close games and it's just groomed us to play good defense in the fourth quarter, and we did today."