Mr. Basketball: Haws best of the best — again

HIGHLAND — When Lone Peak basketball coach Quincy Lewis first saw Tyler Haws play basketball, when Haws was an eighth-grader, he knew something special was coming his way.

Haws, as a 14-year-old, already had a good feel for the game, was a hard worker and had good size.

"I figured he would probably be a kid that would eventually become a first-team all-state player for a couple of years," Lewis said.

But when Lone Peak assistant Tom Perkins told Lewis that Haws, even as an eighth-grader, was already too good to be stuck on Lone Peak's junior-varsity team in the spring of 2005, Lewis' early assessment was already changing. And when Lewis put Haws into a varsity game at Kearns High a few days later, and Haws scored 12 points off the bench in a tough and competitive game, he recognized just how big of a superstar he was going to have for four more seasons.

"I knew that day, walking out of the gym, that it was only a matter of time," Lewis said.

Haws started every game his freshman season at Lone Peak and has been the Knights' main foundation ever since on a team that won back-to-back state 5A championships in 2007-08 and finished as the runner-up this year.

In those four seasons Haws has garnered much more than just two first-team all-state honors. He was the 5A MVP as a sophomore, Mr. Basketball last year as a junior, and is Mr. Basketball again this year — joining Murray's Jeff Johnsen (1995-96) as the only other two-time winner of the award.

"His approach has always been 'I want to be the best player I can be to help my team win a state championship' and whatever comes out of that he'll take," Lewis said.

This season the 6-foot-5 shooting guard, who is heading to BYU next year, averaged 23.4 points per game, shot 61 percent from the floor, 58 percent from 3-point range, and averaged nearly eight rebounds and three assists per game.

He's Lone Peak's all-time scoring leader with 1,772 points, more than 600 points ahead of Sam Burgess. He holds individual school records in 21 categories. But the legacy he hopes to leave at Lone Peak is not measured in numbers.

"I wanted to win, and that was the most important thing, and that I always put the team first," Haws said. "If people told me that that's what they remember about me 20 years from now, I'd be pretty happy."