Coach/Team of the Year: How Chad Sims and Davis won the state championship with 1 returning starter
Davis High boys basketball coach Chad Sims watches from the sideline during the 6A state championship game against Westlake on March 6, 2021 at Salt Lake Community College.
Davis High boys basketball players celebrate after beating Westlake in the 6A boys basketball state championship game Saturday, March 6, 2021, at Salt Lake Community College in Taylorsville.
KAYSVILLE — There’s been an interesting pattern with sports teams at Davis High this school year.
The girls soccer team won the state championship in the fall of 2020, after having lost in the state title game in 2019, the semifinals in 2018 and the second round in 2017.
Davis’ boys basketball team started the 2020-21 season with the same exact trend dating back to the winter of 2017: heartbreaking playoff losses that were one round further than the year prior.
The pattern continued. Davis boys hoops won the region title again, and this time, the Darts were the ones rushing the court after beating Westlake on March 6 to win the 6A state championship.
“It’s pretty cool, it just validates what you do,” head coach Chad Sims said, noting teams of the past that had helped the program get to this point. “It validates all the hard work and the preaching of teamwork. I’m just really happy for our guys and our community and everyone involved.”
Sims is the 2021 Standard-Examiner All-Area Boys Basketball Coach of the Year for the second straight season.
As far as the season’s success, Sims is exceedingly humble and credited the players — he typically always does in postgame interviews — for how well they played and how hard they worked.
On the other side of the coin, the players typically credit teammates and coaches for their success.
It has to be noted, though, that Davis entered this season with one returning starter, just three players with varsity experience and having graduated seniors responsible for 88.7% of the team’s scoring in 2019-20.
That 2019-20 team went 23-2, won Region 1 and finished as state runner-up. Sims said the team still had high expectations going into the season after a good spring and summer.
“I think we had a pretty group of kids (this year). We had a combination of toughness and had high expectations and played hard, they’ve always done that,” Sims said. ” hen you had a combination of underclassmen, juniors, that were pretty skilled … it just was a matter of getting everyone on the same page.”
It took about 4-6 weeks in the season for the team to get on the same page, especially as three of the seniors — Chance Trujillo, Spencer Ferguson and Austin Frasure — got their basketball legs back under them after having just finished the football season.
Davis has been known for good defense and really tough teams. But once the Darts started shooting the ball well later in the year, Sims said the team’s confidence hit another level.
Then Davis felt like it could play with anybody, which it showed was true even with a No. 7 seed in the playoffs. The first two games of the year were double-digit losses to Pleasant Grove and Corner Canyon, both of whom the Darts beat in the playoffs.
From a tactical standpoint, the most visible change in the season came after a 54-51 loss to Layton on Jan. 22.
Sims moved Trujillo from a forward spot out to the perimeter, put Max Painter into the starting lineup as a forward for more rebounding and brought guard Austin Frasure off the bench.
Trujillo took more shots the second half of the year as a result, but he also had to make them — which he did at a high rate. In the final 12 final games of the season, Trujillo shot 57.5% (61 of 106) from the field, 53.7% (36 of 67) from 3-point range and averaged 14.5 points per game.
“The thing about Chance is he can just step off the football field and make a shot,” Sims said of the Davis quarterback, adding that Trujillo would find times during football season to put up shots in the gym.
Postseason games were particularly big for Trujillo, who scored 20 points on 6-of-12 shooting in a semifinal win over Corner Canyon, then hit 7 of 11 shots for 19 points against Westlake in the title game, going 5 of 9 from 3-point range in both games.
Trujillo and Frasure, both seniors, will graduate and the Darts will have to figure out who steps up next.
They ostensibly return four starters next year — Painter, Rex Sunderland, Colby Sims and Henry Ihrig — and bring back a couple others with experience.
Sunderland was the team’s leading scorer this season at 13.2 points per game and was Davis’ most consistent player from start to finish; he’ll be a senior next season and a three-year starter.
The coaches in the region will likely say that Region 1 goes through Kaysville again in 2021-22 even with the addition of Farmington to the group. The Phoenix won Region 5 and was a 5A state runner-up.
Davis usually gets some preseason attention and recognition every year on the back of a steady and successful program, but the Darts are going to have a huge target on their back at the start of the 2021-22 campaign.
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