West Valley City » It's a good thing this story doesn't mirror Friday's Lone Peak-Bingham Class 5A semifinal matchup at the E Center.
If it did, this report would be over at the end of this sentence.
That's how quickly the Knights established dominance over the Miners en route to a 66-46 drubbing before a large gathering of mostly perplexed fans. That's how superior Lone Peak was to a Bingham team that had been dominant in two wins earlier in the week. And that's why Lone Peak will face off against West Jordan tonight in pursuit of yet another state championship.
Speaking of perplexed, Knights coach Quincy Lewis had that same surprised look outside of the Lone Peak locker room in the moments after the final buzzer. Like a lot of prognosticators, Lewis had expected a much closer contest. But a 24-2 run that began in the first quarter and spilled into the second period broke the Miners' spirit early, and they could never recover.
"If someone would've come up to me before the game and told me that we'd win this game by 20, I'd have gone, 'Yeah right,' " Lewis said. "But we came out early and played extremely well. We hit shots and got going early. Bingham also missed some shots too, so we got a little lucky there."
Tyler Haws, the BYU signee, was his usual splendid self, scoring a game-high 22 points on a mixture of mid-range jumpers and fast-break layups.
But, as has been an increasing trend, Haws received plenty of help from his teammates, which wasn't always the case earlier in the regular season.
Dillon Smith, in addition to guarding Bingham star Remington Peck and holding him to 4-for-13 shooting and 11 points, scored 14 points of his own, which included a trio of game-breaking three-pointers in the first quarter.
BYU signee Nate Austin scored 13 points and grabbed six rebounds, all while locking down the middle. Tommy Tebbs, the senior point guard was sublime running the offense, scoring nine points, and grabbing five rebounds in the process.
"My teammates have been playing great," Haws said. "They've really been sticking shots, and that's created more spacing and made the offense a lot easier to run. I feel comfortable heading into the game against West Jordan tomorrow. I feel like we're peaking at the right time, and I think that we feel pretty comfortable on the court as a team."
