Yet the Darts have made a habit of playing well in spite of inexperience at the start.

This year is a departure from a couple of norms, in that Davis has four returning starters coming back from a state title-winning team.

For the first time in awhile, outside expectations are pretty big to start the season.

They’re well aware of how other teams in the state view them, even if head coach Chad Sims stresses “controlling what we can control.”

So far, the pressure hasn’t shown itself too much.

Davis is off to a 3-0 start this season with its latest win a 71-47 victory over Taylorsville on Thursday night at the Northern Utah Shootout, which Davis High is hosting.

“Defensively, I’m really pleased with how they’re playing. They’re farther along defensively than I thought they were going to be,” Sims said. “Offensively, we’re pretty choppy still, we gotta get into a flow, get into a rhythm.”

That’s about how the first quarter went Thursday against the Warriors. Davis held Taylorsville to seven points in the first quarter, but shot 5 of 16 and led 14-7.

Eventually, the Darts pulled away. Three players scored in double figures, led by Henry Ihrig’s 14 points (he had an alley-oop dunk from a Colby Sims pass — Sims had eight assists) and nine rebounds. Ihrig and Colby Sims are returning starters.

Max Painter and Rex Sunderland, both of whom are returning starters, each scored 12 points with seven rebounds.

The 3-0 start means the Darts are now 48-6 dating back to the start of the 2019-20 season. They haven’t been that good this whole time on the back of offense alone, as most teams know.

In 2019-20, the year Davis finished as 6A state runner-up, the Darts allowed an average of 48.4 points per game.

They improved to 45.6 points allowed per game last season. Both years, they’ve been among the best defensive teams in the state.

Chad Sims is a defense-first coach and the Darts spend a lot of time on it.

“We’re asking you to play defense and we’re asking you to buy into a system. You’re gonna have to sacrifice some of your offensive game to do what we’re asking you to do,” Sims said.

“But I think the kids that buy in, I think they embrace it, they love it, they want it. We’ve been successful with it.”

The past two seasons, particularly, show the proof is in the pudding.

“It’s actually pretty powerful when you can get five guys working together on the defensive end,” Sunderland said.

Plenty of kids probably play youth or junior high basketball for a defense-first coach, but plenty more don’t. Once you get to the high school level, a lot of AAU teams aren’t necessarily defensive-minded.

“I think young kids have to adapt to that type of stuff because they’ve been conditioned from being a little kid, what people ask you, ‘How many points did you score tonight?’ They don’t ask you how many rebounds, how many stops,” Sims said.

The defense-first mentality, if a team’s good at it, turns into things like fastbreak chances, points off turnovers and other things that can swing a game in their direction.

Good defense also helps soften the sting of rough shooting nights, which Sunderland had Thursday.

“As long as you can defend and lock them down, you have a longer rope on offense and you can keep shooting with confidence as long as you know our defense can hold them down a little bit,” Sunderland said.

Eventually, Sunderland said, shots normally start to fall if a team is playing tight defense.

It happened in the second quarter against Taylorsville. Sawyer Cottrell made back-to-back 3s and Colby Sims made another that pushed a 16-11 lead to 25-11.

The lead got as high as 28, which was of course aided by 21 assists on 25 made baskets for the Darts, but also 16 steals on defense and 17 points off turnovers.

Many teams in 6A regard Davis as a favorite to repeat as state champs this year, or at least be a contender.

The Darts acknowledge that pressure and know they’ll get every team’s best shot.

“I mean yeah, there’s definitely pressure but, like, bring it on,” Sunderland said. “I think we have all the talent in the world, and we’ve put the work in and we’re ready to get everyone’s best shot.”