WEST JORDAN — Offensive rebounding doesn’t often make a highlight reel.
Even the most critical board rarely wows a crowd or impresses the media, and it might be next to impossible to find a poster celebrating a key grab.
It is, however, a critical component to winning basketball games. And if the Alta Hawks girls basketball team doubted their coaches on this subject, it only took a single game to drive the point home — a one-point loss to Brighton.
“It really is (a matter of effort),” said sophomore guard Mariah Martin after the Hawks rebounded from that loss with a critical 57-46 region victory over Copper Hills Tuesday. “We have a team goal to only allow the other team eight offensive rebounds the entire game. And so we achieved that with only allowing seven. Against Brighton, we let them have 20 offensive rebounds, and that’s what killed us obviously.”
The Hawks handed the Grizzlies their first loss of region play and created a three-way tie atop the standings.
“Our region is definitely up for grabs,” said Martin, who paced all players with 17 points. “It’s really anyone’s.”
Sophomore forward Sierra McNichol said the win “felt good” but was also critical in what promises to be a tight region race.
“It was a big win,” said McNichol, who added 10 points. “Beating them when they’re undefeated was big for us, and especially on their home court.”
The Hawks seemed to have a solid grip on the game’s momentum when they were able to utilize a half-court trap and score points on fast-break transitions.
“We wanted to give them a little bit of pressure,” said Alta head coach Sean Yeager. “When we extend full court, I don’t think we’re athletic enough to stop them. It’s kind of hurt us in the past, so we’re trying to stick with the three-quarter to half-court trap and some different things.”
He said he thought his team had mixed results following that strategy.
“The main thing we’re working on is knowing what we’re dropping to if we don’t get a trap,” Yeager said. “So that’s still something that’s a work in progress. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it looked like it worked because we got lucky.”
The Grizzlies were led by Shirsten Wissinger, who scored 17 points, and Baylee Leiter, who added 11 points and eight rebounds.
Both teams are young and play a fearless brand of basketball. Yeager said that while many of his team leaders are underclassmen, they have a lot of basketball experience from which to draw.
“It’s a strong class,” he said of his sophomores. “They’ve played together. They’ve spent a lot of time traveling and playing together, and I think that helps. A lot of credit goes to the people who put in the time in the summer.”
McNicol and Martin said that while AAU is more competitive and has prepared them for the demands of high school basketball, they feel a little more pressure playing for their school communities.
“We’re going 4A next year, so one of our goals is to take 5A state championship in our last year,” Martin said.
And then McNicol cautioned, “But we’re just taking one step at a time, slowly working toward it.”
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