Murray » There were no elaborate halftime speeches. No drastic adjustments made. No motivational tools to propel Bingham to its 45-29 win over Cottonwood on Friday night.
All the Miners needed to do, as Braden Anderson put it, was to "get back to Bingham football."
"We stooped to Cottonwood's level a bit in the first half," Anderson said. "I don't know what that was with us. They did a lot of talking, and we talked back. We shouldn't have done that. But we played much better after halftime."
It all started and ended with Anderson. With his team holding a slim 17-14 lead, the senior defensive back returned the second half kickoff for a touchdown.
He did much more, too. Anderson picked up a fumble and returned it 70 yards to the Cottonwood one yard line to set up a Bingham touchdown. He deflected four passes. He was all over the field defensively and he recovered two onside kicks just for good measure.
His team followed his lead. The score was much closer than the game was. The Miners scored 28 consecutive points to lead 45-14, before Cottonwood scored twice against Bingham's second- and third-team defenses.
"We wanted to come out and play a clean game," Miners coach Dave Peck said. "We've played a lot of hype games so far this season. It feels like we've already played a full year. So we wanted to come out and play well. I wasn't really happy with the first half, but I didn't think we were all that flat either."
The Colts, after winning three consecutive games, were good offensively and moved the ball fairly easily. But they were stopped on fourth down early in the second half, and incurred a number of penalties that stopped drives as well.
