Over the years, most of the top prep basketball players in Utah have stayed home to play college ball. Guys like Josh Grant and Kendall Youngblood have been the stars their whole careers at Utah and Utah State. The majority of BYU's players every year are home-grown products.
Usually those who leave the state don't end up in starring roles - Kurt Miller, the all-everything guard who went from Ben Lomond to New Mexico, being a prime example.However, just up the road in Idaho, a couple of former Utah prep stars, are leading the way for a Boise State team that is off to a 9-5 start.
Tanoka Beard, a 6-9, 245-pound junior center from Bonneville High School, has been a star for the Broncos ever since his freshman year. Last year he was first-team all-Big Sky and this year he leads the team in scoring (18.8) and is second in rebounding (5.9). He's already 6th on the all-time Boise State scoring list
Boise's second-leading scorer is Jermaine Haliburton, who starred for East High School, before going to College of Eastern Utah for two years. Haliburton has been a pleasant surprise for the Bronco program, since he wasn't penciled in as a starter at the beginning of the season.
But he has started 12 of 14 games, scoring 11.8 points per game and leading the team in 3-point shooting with 30 of 66 (45.5 percent).
Boise State plays host to Weber State this coming Thursday night. They don't come to Ogden until Feb. 22.BRADLEY REMEMBERED: Have you seen the latest issue of Basketball Times? The Jan. 30 issue (this type of publication is dated at least a month in advance, for some reason) has a cover story called "Basketball's 5 Most Intriguing People."
The list is a curious one. It doesn't include the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson or Karl Malone. The five chosen by Larry Donald are Bernard King, the oft-injured forward of the Washington Bullets, Chicago Bull GM Jerry Krause, Kansas Coach Roy Williams, Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese and . . . BYU center Shawn Bradley.
According to the article, these are people "beyond all the obvious newsmakers . . . whose achievements, lack of achievement, mere presence or even absence gives occasion to pause and ponder." Bradley must fall in the latter category, since he is six months into an LDS mission to Australia.
We won't get into the qualifications of the other four, but here is part of what is written about Bradley.
"At 7-6, with great athletic skills and a warrior's heart, Bradley is a young man who might, someday, impact basketball in a manner of past goliaths like George Mikan and Wilt Chamberlain . . . "
"Here is a man with a chance to be the player with the most impact ever because no one has come along at this size with these tools and yet no one seems overly excited . . .
"Much intrigue surrounds this young man . . . not so much where he's been and what he's done, but to where he might go in the 1990s."SCORING IN BUNCHES: During his last two games, Weber State forward Al Hamilton has hit his 20-point average scoring a total of 40 points. What's amazing about his scoring is that he went nearly 50 straight minutes of action without scoring a single point.
Hamilton scored 19 points against Montana State, but his last point came with 50 seconds left in the first half. Five days later against Nevada, Hamilton went scoreless the entire first half and the first eight minutes of the second half, before hitting a baseline jumper. Then he went wild, scoring 19 more points in the final 11 minutes to finish with 21. QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Utah Coach Rick Majerus, quoted in The Sporting News in a story about teams with cupcake schedules, comparing scheduling to his dating life: "I'd like to go out with 9s and 10s, but they shriek in horror and run away from me. I can only date 5s and 6s. You have to know who you are. That's my lot in life for being a fat, bald guy."