COMMENTARY – Well, don’t look now, but someone’s undefeated.
Being undefeated in sports is akin to throwing a no-hitter in baseball. It’s just there and no one is supposed to talk about it until it reaches its completion or it is foiled. Mention an undefeated season early on and people look at you like you’re crazy, like it’s an insult.
Part superstition, part pessimism, I’m told that my very mention of the perfect season (or the no-hitter) could very likely bring the whole thing crashing down,
I’ve always been one of those guys that thought all that superstition talk was a bunch of balderdash.
So here I am, mentioning that the Desert Hills girls basketball team is undefeated.
I’m not trying to curse the Lady Thunder. I just think they have an excellent chance of running the table.
The inside-outside combination of Haley Bodnar and Blair Bliss have made Desert Hills as tough a team to guard as any in 3A, especially if you throw in important complementary players such as Karlee Myers and Emily Seifert.
There are certainly some big challenges ahead for the 8-0 Lady Thunder, who are coached by former Pine View boys head coach Chris Allred.
Last year they had an excellent team, but fell in the 3A Championship game to Snow Canyon. The Warriors are still very good this season (SC is 6-3). But for my money, I’d say the championship goes through Desert Hills.
The Lady Thunder have won all eight of their games easily, outscoring opponents by a staggering margin. The average score in those eight games: DH 58, everyone else 31.
Undefeated? Probably not. But that’s not the goal anyway. The goal is a region and then state title, and the Lady Thunder should be in the driver’s seat all the way for both of those things.
Over at Snow Canyon, Amy Harris continues to play very well. The BYU signee is averaging 15.2 points a game for the Lady Warriors and will hit her 100th high school 3-pointer sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Harris has accumulated some amazing stats in her high school career. She has scored in double-figures in 22 straight games and 36 of the last 37 games she’s played. She has scored at least two points in every varsity game she’s played except for her first one, back on Nov. 24, 2009. That means she has scored in 73 straight games. Harris has piled up 942 points and will most certainly top 1,00 points this season (SC has just two games before the new year, so it will probably be some time in january that she reaches the 1,000-point plateau. At her current pace, it will probably be Jan. 10 at Dixie, but with a couple of big games, she could top 1,000 at home against rival Desert Hills on Jan. 8.
On the boys side, Cedar looked really good in winning at Desert Hills last week, The Redmen have size (Dustin Staggs and Ryan Armstrong are the top big-man duo in the region), shooters (Dason Coronado put on a show against the Thunder) and a wise veteran coach in Craig Cardon.
By the way, Cardon mockingly took exception to my calling his team’s offense “finicky” in the first half against Desert Hills.
“Finicky? I’ve never heard a sports writer use that word. Finicky? Really?” he said, mockingly.
Finicky, according to Dictionary.com, means fussy or excessively particular.
I thought his team was tentative and hesitant to shoot the ball. Doesn’t that make them finicky?
Anyway, coach was probably right. I should have said nervous or hesitiant. Guess I’ve been watching too many cat food commercials.
Anyway, Desert Hills took the home loss hard, but only for a day. On Friday and Saturday, the Thunder came out and blasted Delta and Spanish Fork, both of whom had beaten Cedar.
So what did we learn? Nothing really, except that I believe Cedar, Desert Hills and Spanish Fork will all be there on the last couple of days of the state tournament.
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Andy Griffin is a sports commentator. The opinions stated in this article are his and not representative of St. George News.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @oldschoolag
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