5A girls high school basketball: American Fork advances using defensive intensity

TAYLORSVILLE — Intensity. Focus. Defense. The American Fork Cavemen are concentrating hard on those three things as they make their way through the 5A state girls basketball tournament.

And they came out with them in abundance when they took out the Kearns Cougars in the quarterfinals 55-38 to earn a berth in the semis against the Bingham Miners.

The Cavemen have been looking forward to this season ever since they lost a heartbreaker in the championship game last year against Skyline, and now they're one step closer to getting back into that title match.

American Fork coach Corey Clayton was much more impressed with his team's performance against the Bobcats than he was with the way they played against Alta in the first round.

"That was a lot better, more defensive intensity. We still had some breakdowns but not because we weren't working hard. Our ball pressure defense was a lot better this game than it was last game," said Clayton.

And his players agreed. Kaycee Mansfield, who led the Cavemen with 14 points and three steals, added, "You could just tell in the locker room we were more focused. We were more prepared even before we came out onto the court, more ready to play."

And the first quarter is where the intensity shined the most as the Cavemen rocketed out to a 23-10 lead, which appears to be a great offensive outing, but instead was all led by the defense.

"That first quarter we came out and were aggressive. We got a big lead and that helped our confidence a lot," said the forward from the team that is 20-0 against instate foes.

And that first quarter intensity is just what the coach asked from his team as he wanted to take it to the Cougars from the opening tip.

"I told them in the locker room that we needed to go out and attack, go out and hit them in the mouth and see how they respond. And I thought that after that initial onslaught of steals they started pushing back a little bit," said Clayton.

They did push back a little, mostly from off the glass as the Cougars outrebounded the Cavemen 34-23 in the contest, with many of the boards coming from Brooke Larsen, who led the team with 20 points and 11 rebounds.

And while some teams can grab 16 steals in a game and not get much out of them, the Cavemen specialize in running the court with all five players.

But in spite of the fact that Clayton loves to see his team running the basketball at every opportunity, he was also happy that his starters had plenty of chance to rest as he pulled them out with plenty of time left on the clock. Nobody played more than Cydne Mason's 24 minutes.

"The more downtime I can get for those guys the better. I'm happy to get rest for those players because they're not likely to get rest tomorrow," said Clayton.

The Cavemen won with a balanced attack as in addition to Mansfield's 14 points, Amy Krommenhoek added 13 points and four steals, and Mason and Haley Holmstead each finished with 10 points.

Though Larsen clearly led the tough Kearns squad with her 20-point double double, Micalee Orton did add eight rebounds to the solid rebounding effort.

E-MAIL: jolsen@desnews.com