High school boys basketball: Bingham runs away from Skyline

OGDEN — Bingham was simply too big, too fast and too good for Skyline on Monday.

In an obvious mismatch both on paper and on the court, the No. 2 Miners outscored Skyline in all four quarters to methodically pull away for 79-58 victory in the opening round of the 5A state tournament on Monday.

Bingham shot 54 percent, had three players score in double figures and enjoyed a 56-24 edge in points in the paint.

"We're just playing team basketball. We don't care about who gets the credit, we just want to go out play our best and get the win," said Bingham's Logan Parker, who led the way with 19 points.

Skyline did well to hang the Miners for two and a half quarters, but it simply ran out of gas.

In the third quarter Skyline cut Bingham's lead to six on three different occasions, but each time the Miners responded with a quick basket to push the lead to eight. Eventually Skyline's offense went cold and Jordan Phouthavong extended the lead to 55-41 by the end of the quarter on a driving lay-up.

"We just started pushing the ball a lot more, got a lot of lay-ups and they started missing shots," said Bingham's Connor Williams, who chipped in with 18 points, six steals and two impressive dunks.

Bingham advances to Wednesday's quarterfinals and will face the winner of American Fork-Davis at 11 a.m.

"It feels good to get the first win out of the way and it feels good to be done with the leading scorer in the state, it's not an easy game by any means," said Bingham coach Mark Dubach.

Jaden Jackson came into the game leading the entire state at over 25 points per game, and the Miners just wanted to make things difficult on him. He still finished the game with 19 points on 6 of 14 shooting from the field, including 3 of 6 from 3-point range, but he had to work for every point.

"We tried to put pressure on Jaden with one or two guys regularly at half court to try and wear him down a little," said Jackson.

Everyone on Skyline seemed to wear down.

In the first half the Eagles shot 52 percent from the field, which limited Bingham's opportunities to run. In the second half those shots stopped falling and Bingham was off to the races.

"We got out, started running quick, as soon as we get in the motion of pushing the ball and playing good defense we're a pretty hard team to stop," said Parker.

In the loss, Skyline got a dozen points each from Garrett England and Taylor Lithgow.

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

e-mail: jedward@desnews.com