High school girls basketball: Miners eke out win over Titans

SOUTH JORDAN — Bingham High girls basketball coach Rand Rasmussen is grateful to the Syracuse Titans for showing the Miners just how vulnerable they are three weeks into the season.

"Obviously we are in no position to be thinking about winning a state title, let alone a region title," said Rasmussen after the Miners managed to hang on for a 39-36 win against Syracuse on Tuesday. "Our goal should be to try and get better each game; and that's all we're trying to do right now."

Rasmussen was pleased with the win, even if it wasn't the prettiest victory.

"Am I happy to play as bad as we did and come away with a win? Yes," he said. "That's a good team. Yeah, they're in their second year, but they have every kid back and they are battle-tested.

"That's the advantage to playing a team like Syracuse is that they're helping you see things you might not see when you're up on a team and sometimes you get blinded by the fact that you look so good."

Bingham owned a slight lead in the first quarter and stretched it to a 16-10 advantage going into halftime. While Bingham played its trademark tough, physical defense, the Titans seemed out of sync at times during the game.

The third-ranked Miners came out fired up in the third quarter and stretched the lead to 24-12 before the Titans found any kind of offensive rhythm. Meagan Butler led the team back into the game with gritty defense and nine points. Sophomore guard Kiana Fonua added nine points and also helped with the perimeter defense.

It was the fourth quarter that saw the Titans play their best basketball with better rebounding, as well as matching the Miners intense defense. Three different Titan players had steals in the fourth quarter as they cut the lead to three points with a 3-point shot from Butler with under a minute left in the game. Bingham had the ball out of bounds with about 30 seconds left in the game when Jen Hazlett tied up the inbounds pass to give the possession to Syracuse.

Brittany Martin hit a jump shot with 25 seconds left to put the Titans within a point. Then Hazlett stole another inbound pass but was almost immediately fouled. She missed both foul shots, and while Martin earned the rebound, but couldn't get the put-back.

Bingham forward Taeja Afalava, a two-sport athlete who moved to South Jordan from California last summer, grabbed the rebound and was fouled. She made both free throws with 15 seconds on the clock to seal the win for Bingham.

In the end, it was 5-of-14 foul shooting that was the difference for Syracuse.

"I think our youth showed a little tonight," said Syracuse coach Rob Reisbeck. "But we learned a lot. I'm more than proud of what we did. They got up 10 points and it would have been easy to just give up, but they kept battling back. Down the stretch we had our chances to win, and you can't ask for more than that."

In addition to Afalava's 10 points, Rachelle Gines also scored 10 points and really provided momentum in the third quarter for the Miners.

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E-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com