High school girls basketball: Maylee Anderson, Rachel McBride lead the way as Syracuse holds off Bingham

Exactly 365 days ago, Syracuse walked away with a dramatic win over an eventual 13-11 Bingham team, 56-53.

Friday night’s win over the Miners can count as an anniversary celebration.

Junior guard Maylee Anderson led all scorers with 16 points and junior center Rachel McBride tied her career-high with 15, including two crucial free throws in the final minute, as Syracuse fought off a late Bingham rally to win 43-41 in the two teams’ first outing of 2025.

While Anderson provided most of the scoring punch, McBride’s effect on the game was impactful on both ends. Her imposing 6-foot-3 presence froze Bingham’s offense inside the paint on numerous possessions, and she kept several possessions alive with offensive rebounds on a night when she eclipsed 100 points on the season.

It didn’t happen immediately, as she struggled with turnovers and traveling early on, but her confidence and control visibly and exponentially grew with each quarter.

“I just needed to finish through,” McBride said. “Coach always talks about how we need to finish the whole game, and we needed to have a player step up.”

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Bingham senior guard Addy Horsley led the Miners with 13 points, but her final attempt at the basket to force overtime was stuffed with two hands by Syracuse backup center Olivia Sorensen.

With the win, Syracuse moves to 9-2 on the season. The signature win over a Bingham team coming off a long stay at the Nike Tournament in Las Vegas helped the Titans wash off the smudge of their previous loss to Sky View, one that saw them get outscored 20-2 in the fourth quarter to lose by three.

“I really challenged the girls to come out with some energy and some intensity, especially on defense,” Titans coach Braden Hamblin said. “Typically, we’re a zone team, but I challenged them to go man … I thought the girls stepped up, rose to the occasion and played good defense.”

Anderson hit a pair of 3-pointers to break open an icy first quarter. Those two treys helped Syracuse end the first period with a 10-4 advantage.

Early in the second quarter, Syracuse built its lead with two buckets from McBride, forcing the Miners to take a timeout down by 10 points, 14-4.

For a game anemic on offense both ways, that timeout turned out to be the shot of iron both teams needed. Bingham got two quick layups, one on a fast break from Iman Finau, and later went on an 8-0 run to tie the game, 18-18.

“At the end of the first quarter, we talked about basketball being a game of runs,” Hamblin said. “This is a good Bingham team. They’ve got nine wins; they’re not just gonna roll over and die.”

Syracuse entered halftime with the lead, 22-20.

Syracuse never trailed after taking the lead in the first quarter, and for every time that Bingham tied up the score in a close contest, the Titans always seemed to have an answer.

Down by five at the start of the fourth quarter, Bingham tied up the game with a string of free throws while Syracuse endured a cold stretch, but just as the Miners came back, forward Aubri Stoker buried a 3-pointer from way behind the arc.

Bingham’s Lena Casperson tied up the game with a layup in the final minute, but after Anderson’s go-ahead bucket clanked off the rim, McBride was there for the second-chance play and drew contact to earn shots at the stripe.

She coolly sank both of them for the game-winning points.

“If this ball didn’t go through the net, I needed to box out, get this rebound, and go back up,” McBride said.

The Titans were ranked as the No. 3 team in 6A back during the last polling period on Dec 15. While the loss to Sky View could have hampered that, Friday’s triumph does a lot to keep Syracuse firmly on the minds of the rest of the state.

The Titans remain at home next Tuesday to take on Cyprus in their last nonregion game of the schedule. Bingham begins its Region 2 slate next Thursday with a home matchup against Riverton.