Taylorsville » Bingham's Dyana Thurgood knows what her role is. She knows what she needs to do in order for her team to be successful.
Coach Rand Rasmussen often refers to her as the team's defensive stopper, guarding the opponents' best player. But in the Miners' quarterfinal game against Weber, Thurgood wasn't the only one to play a big defensive role.
Bingham's stingy defense was so tough to score against that Weber couldn't get a field goal in the first half. Because of that, the Miners easily beat the Warriors 55-24 on Thursday at Salt Lake Community College to advance to the semifinals.
"I'm not going to go out there and score 100 points. I don't worry about scoring," Thurgood said, who had two steals and contributed to a defense that forced 20 turnovers. "I just need to do whatever I need to do to get a stop. We focus on defense so much. We can score but if we play good defense, everything else falls into place."
Weber played tough defense, too. The Warriors held Bingham, a team that is very capable of scoring more than 20 points a quarter, to 10 in the first. But Weber couldn't get into a rhythm offensively. The Warriors tried to get the ball into senior post player Shay Sorensen but Bingham's Rachel Gines kept poking the ball away and made it tough for Weber to get a clean pass into the paint.
By halftime, Bingham had a 26-6 lead. Even though the Miners had a comfortable lead, Rasmussen saw room for improvement.
"I think we played like a chicken with our heads cut off [at the end]. We have to improve on that in the future," Rasmussen said. "The tournament is just bout win, survive and move on."
It was clear the Miners would move on early in the second half. Because of that, Rasmussen played a lot of his younger players. Eighteen players got into the game and 13 players scored. Freshman Dezz Ramos led the scoring with 11 points while Chalese Fankhauser had 10.
Weber did finally get better looks at the basket in the fourth quarter. The Warriors went to Sorensen and she led Weber with nine points. She had 10 rebounds.
For the Warriors, who won a state tournament game for the first time in about a decade or so, not all was lost.
"I'm just really proud of the growth of my girls. We really got better every game," Weber coach Lisa Dalebout said. "We've just tried to establish something to be respected and I think our girls did that."
