5A girls basketball: Defense guides Bountiful past Skyline, into 1st title game since 2016
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- Bountiful’s Jordyn Harvey (5) drives against Skyline’s Udochi Okoro (1) during a 5A state semifinal game Friday, March 3, 2023, at the Dee Events Center in Ogden.
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- Bountiful’s Lizzy McConkie, left, defends Skyline’s Leelu Bare during a 5A state semifinal game Friday, March 3, 2023, at the Dee Events Center in Ogden.
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- Bountiful’s Claire Cook, left, tries to score against Skyline’s Tina Njike (15) during a 5A state semifinal game Friday, March 3, 2023, at the Dee Events Center in Ogden.
OGDEN — The state tournament has been a contrast of in-game experiences for Bountiful High’s girls basketball team.
In Wednesday’s quarterfinal win over Highland, the Redhawks gave up a season-high 59 points but found a way to win, 65-59.
In Friday’s semifinal over No. 22 Skyline, the Redhawks’ smothering defense returned, holding the Eagles to 34 points in a 41-34 win at the Dee Events Center.
Now No. 2 Bountiful gets to add another experience to the state tournament: playing in Saturday’s championship game.
“It’s really good, really relaxing. Walking in we definitely had a lot of confidence, yeah we can do this. Now it’s like, ‘Alright, we got it secured, tomorrow we’ve got to come back and play even harder,'” Bountiful senior Jordyn Harvey said.
The Redhawks (22-1) last reached the title game in 2016 when it beat Springville 63-42 behind eventual BYU volleyball player Kennedy Eschenberg (neé Redding).
Saturday at 1:30 p.m., they’ll coincidentally face No. 1 Springville (23-2), the two-time defending champion that breezed 56-31 in its semifinal over No. 21 Spanish Fork.
Both teams have recent history against each other. The Red Devils beat Bountiful 41-21 in last year’s semifinals at the Huntsman Center; the Redhawks returned the favor 58-50 at home in December this year.
“Even though we beat them, we’ve said all year long that the championship goes through Springville,” Bountiful coach Joel Burton said. “They’re good, they know how to be here, they know how to win. It should really be a battle as we get out there tomorrow,”
After three cagey quarters Friday, two big plays by the Harvey sisters set Bountiful apart early in the fourth quarter.
Leading 29-27, a loose ball from an out-of-bounds play rolled to sophomore Taylor Harvey a few feet behind the 3-point line at the top of the key.
Harvey didn’t realize there were just 3 seconds left on the shot clock until she looked at the bench, saw everyone pointing up at the shot clock and looked up at the clock herself.
So Harvey fired off a long 3. Swish.
Moments later, Jordyn Harvey stole a Skyline pass, raced down the floor for a layup, got fouled and converted the free throw. That 29-27 lead was now 35-27.
“Now we’re up eight, now we have the energy in a semifinal game with 3 minutes left, so I think that energy shift was just super important,” Jordyn Harvey said.
Taylor Harvey finished with a game-high 13 points, plus six rebounds and four blocks. Jordyn Harvey had 10 points, nine rebounds and three steals. Claire Cook scored six points with seven boards.
Skyline started the game running low-post plays for Penn-committed center Tina Njike, where she’d seal off her defender on the back side and shoot an open layup after everyone else cleared out.
Bountiful figured those out, then Skyline’s Udochi Okoro came off the bench to shoot 4 for 5 and score eight points as the Eagles closed to a 22-22 halftime tie after she made a late second-quarter layup.
Where the Redhawks’ 5A-best defense got picked apart and gave up a season-high 59 points to Highland in the quarterfinals, Friday was a different story.
The 34 points allowed constituted a better-than-normal defensive game for Bountiful, which came in allowing an average of 36.1 per game.
Skyline didn’t score for the first 4 minutes and 53 seconds of the third quarter, nor did the Eagles score for the first 3 minutes and 49 seconds of the fourth quarter.
Skyline shot 14 of 44 from the field (31.8%), 2 of 15 on 3-pointers and committed 13 turnovers. After scoring 14 team points in the second quarter on 6-for-11 shooting, the Eagles struggled for just 12 points in the entire second half and shot 4 for 20.
Njike scored eight points with 13 rebounds before fouling out with 25 seconds left in the game.
“I think we were really dialed in every time we stepped on the court and I think it worked,” said Jordyn Harvey, who picked up Njike on defense most of the game.
Bountiful shot slightly worse than Skyline, 14 for 46 (30.4%), but compensated at the 3-point and free throw lines — just like in Wednesday’s quarterfinal win.
The Redhawks shot 7 of 10 on free throws in the fourth quarter alone in what was entirely a single-digit game, and went 9 for 15 overall there. They were also 4 for 13 from 3-point range, with Lizzie McConkie shooting 2 of 3.
Though Bountiful basketball hasn’t played for a title in seven years, many players on this year’s basketball team are familiar with deep postseason runs by having played on the Redhawks’ girls soccer and volleyball teams that lost in the title game and semifinals, respectively, in the fall.
“There’s a lot of hunger there to try to go get this thing, so it’s been nice to see the combination of those two things to keep kind of driving us forward as we’ve gone through the season,” Burton said.
Connect with reporter Patrick Carr via email at pcarr@standard.net, Twitter @patrickcarr_ and Instagram @standardexaminersports.