Rams Fall in Finals

Highland High Men’s basketball entered into a tournament at Corner Canyon in which they had three rounds of play. Their first contest was against Alta in the first round they were able to outplay their opponent winning the game and earning their way into the second round. In the second round they faced a harder challenge in the Riverton team but they were able to get passed them in a close matchup. In the finals they were matched up against Westlake and after a hard fought game, they were just barely beaten and named the runner up of the tournament.

In the first contest against Alta they were playing away at corner canyon, which meant they were facing their first game away from Highland. They were ready for this and their opponent showing it as they put up a lot of points and were able to beat them 71-57, then they advanced to play Riverton.

In this game Highland and Riverton both struggled to put points on the board in the first half ending the half with a score of Highland 13 and Riverton 18. Highland wasn’t executing on offense like they wanted to in the first half but at halftime they tried to refocus their efforts for the second half.

“Our team is really struggling to start but coach really gets on us,” Christian Rich said. “So we can come together as a team and focus on playing hard and get defensive stops.”

This seemed to work for their team as they scored 39 points in the second half tripling their first half total. They caught fire from the three point line draining a lot of the shots that they took, but Riverton kept pace with them and was still leading going into the fourth quarter. Riverton had been up the entire game but Highland had kept close behind the whole time and the end of the game was no different. It came down to the last shots as Rich was able to drain a go ahead three pointer to go up by one and then junior Chris Rich hit two free throws to stretch the lead to three. Riverton got an easy two at the other end which was the last basket making the score 52-51 for Highland. The game ended with Highland on which meant that Highland was advancing to the finals against Westlake.

The final was a close game from the beginning, both teams were consistently scoring throughout the first half with Westlake staying in front by one or two points. Neither team could figure out how to pull away from the other which lead to a halftime score of Highland trailing 27-29. This continued through the second half the teams trading blows everytime one team hit a shot the other team would match it on the other end. This led to a fourth quarter three from Highland putting them up by two points with only a minute left in the game, but the very next shot Westlake was able to hit a three and go up by one. Highland was not able to convert which forced them to foul to stop the clock. All they could do was hope for a miss but Westlake didn’t give it to them and they ended up beating Highland 52-49.

Even though Highland was not able to win the tournament they were able to bounce back after their season opening loss with a very strong performance. They can build on this positive experience so that they can have a good rest of the season and play the best they can.