To a casual observer, Bingham’s Derek Peterson was simply in the right place at the right time to tip in the overtime game-winner on Tuesday night.
Realistically, there was nothing fluky about his athletic catch and finish after Olympus’ defense forced Parker Snedaker — who’d been red hot all game with six 3-pointers — into an off-balance airball from behind the arc.
Peterson is Bingham’s best offensive rebounder and is always crashing the clash. On top of that, he was the setter on Bingham’s 6A state championship team in the spring, so the motion of catching and putting the ball up in one motion is something he’s done a thousand times.
This time it was just a basketball instead of a volleyball, as his tip in with 2.2 seconds remaining gave Bingham the 80-79 win.
“Derek has a great feel for the game and just where to cut, where to move, a great offensive rebounder,” said Bingham coach Kyle Straatman. “We love multi-sport athletes at Bingham … so in that moment, yeah, that is exactly where he is used to being all the time. So it just kind of played out the right way.”
Truthfully, Peterson said it was a pretty straightforward play, “I just set it, honestly, just in the hoop. Nothing really special. I just kind of jumped up because I knew the shot was going up. So I just kind of crashed, like I always do, and I was in the right spot.”
Olympus called a quick timeout after Peterson’s bucket with 2.2 seconds remaining. Bingham’s, defense, however, smothered Olympus’ Gavin Lowe at mid-court and never let him get a desperation shot off before the buzzer.
Bingham’s students stormed the floor for the second time — the first after Peterson’s layup, not knowing that Olympus had called a time-out.
Realistically, it was a game worthy of two court stormings after 13 lead changes, nine ties, two huge scoring runs in the fourth quarter and an unlikely game-winning hero.
Bingham led 51-50 after the third, but in the fourth caught fire NBA Jam style with five straight 3-pointers to open up a 68-52 lead with just over three minutes remaining.
“We were finally getting some stops. We did some things with Gavin, who is a phenomenal player, to get it out of his hand. And the guys were buying in, and we were getting stops to get it started,” Straatman said. “Offensively, we were playing our style, which is to get out and run and move the basketball.”
Extending that run back to the middle of the third quarter when Olympus led 44-38, Bingham’s spurt over nine minutes was 30-8.
To Olympus’ credit, it kept fighting, despite trailing by 16. Adam Bywater kickstarted the rally with back-to-back offensive rebound-and-one put-backs to cut the lead to 69-58 with 1:14 remaining.
With that lead, Bingham’s coaches surely would’ve expected their players to protect the lead. In its last six possessions though, Bingham turned it over three times, went 1 of 4 from the free-throw line and missed a half-courter at the buzzer.
After Bywater made another layup to trim the lead to 69-60, Lowe scored 10 points in the final 44 seconds — including two 3-pointers — to miraculously force overtime after erasing the improbable deficit.
Lowe finished with a career-high 44 points, despite Bingham throwing everything it could at him defensively.
Momentum was fully on Olympus’ side heading into overtime, but Bingham’s coaching staff tried to simplify the mindset heading into OT.
“We talked about focusing on our defense and what we were going to do there, and then just said, ‘play hard and have some fun.’ My assistant coach stepped in and said, ‘hey, this is why you play basketball. This is the fun part about high school basketball, is being able to compete with the crowd and all this stuff,’” Straatman said.
The teams traded leads five times in overtime, with Lowe putting Olympus ahead 79-78 with 15.1 seconds remaining with two free-throws.
Bingham was out of timeouts, and pushed the ball up-court, quickly trying to create a good shot. Olympus’ defense snuffed out the first couple of actions, with the ball eventually ending up in Snedaker’s hands with five seconds left.
In many ways, he was the perfect person to get the ball even if it was an fade-away 3-pointer with Lowe in his face.
Snedaker scored a career-high 28 points on six 3-pointers on a night his uncle dubbed him “The Sniper” in the pregame introductions.
“It’s funny because that’s his uncle who stepped in to announce for us, and he said, ‘Can I make up nicknames?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, go ahead,’” said Straatman.
The nickname for his nephew wasn’t wrong. Snedaker made his first 3-pointer, and then his second, and didn’t really ever cool down.
“He came out and hit his first four, and I think all of them contested too, and showed how much work he has put in in the offseason. He’s a big-time junior college player that has zero offers yet. He’s an under-the-radar guy, but he is a flat-out stud,” said Straatman.
The Sniper might’ve misfired on his last shot, but Peterson was there for the game-winning tip in.
Along with Snedaker’s 28 points, Luke West and Peterson each scored a dozen points, with Denzel Peoples chipping in with 10. As a team, Bingham made 12 3-pointers.
Bingham improved to 2-1 this preseason playing against three of the best teams in the state. After falling to Timpview by 17 points in the opener, it now has back-to-back wins over American Fork and Olympus, the preseason No. 1 teams in 6A and 5A respectively.
“I scheduled tough because I knew our team was going to be really good,” Straatman said. “We literally have zero breaks in our schedule. I told the guys we might limp in .500 like American Fork a couple years ago, but we’re going to be battle-tested and ready to go.”
Bingham and Olympus both came out of Tuesday’s game battle-tested — the type of game that three months from now in the state tournament game pay dividends in crunch time.