Bryce Valley wins first hoops championship in school history
Bryce Valley quite simply turned in a performance for the ages to win the school’s first boys basketball championship in school history.
Aside from one title apiece in chorus and drill team, the Mustangs had never won a state title in anything before Saturday, but from now on, the people from Bryce Valley will always be able to say that they produced a state champion in basketball.
It took an amazing team performance against Piute in tonight’s title game to make that a reality.
Kace Roundy was sensational in the fourth quarter of Bryce Valley’s semifinal win over Monticello, but after he went to the bench with his fifth foul against Piute early in the fourth quarter, it was up to his teammates to pull the Mustangs through.
Pull through, they did.
Bryce Valley coach Eric Jessen got so many gutsy performances from his players after Roundy fouled out, and the end product was a 53-48 victory before a ruckus crowd at the Sevier Valley Center.
My game story from tonight’s championship contest and a side story on the improvement of the Roundy brothers’ supporting cast will be posted online in the next little while and will be available on our Prep page here..
Before I pack up and head north, here are some additional thoughts and observations from the final day of the 1A boys basketball tournament:
As Jessen pointed out afterward, the Mustangs had previously overcome lots of obstacles this season. So when Kace Roundy went to the bench permanently, it was a case of his other players needing to rise up one final time.
To their immense credit, they responded brilliantly.
“One of the things I told them before the game is, ‘We’ve overcome a lot of struggles this season,” said Jessen. “We have seven losses, and we’ve battled. We had a bad lapse against Piute in late January – we had a bad lapse mentally, and I told them we overcame (that) because of the way we played in some tournament games, as well as some of the other battles that we had.
“Our last run here was going to have to be against Piute on this floor in the championship. That’s what we told them today, and they stepped up and did an excellent job.”
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I liked this quote from Korde Chynoweth that I wasn’t able to fit into print anywhere but will mention it here:
“We had been pretty good,” Chynoweth said of life at Bryce Valley before the Roundys. “But Kace and Kam moved over – and they’d already won a couple – and they kind of got us going right from the get-go. We’d been playing good ball, but they came over and motivated us.”
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I thought the crowd inside the Sevier Valley Center tonight was sensational. Both schools represented themselves extremely well, and this place was nearly full and rocked from start to finish. Tabiona principal Bob Park, his wife Ranae and I did some rough calculations during halftime of how many people we thought were here, and we decided that the crowd was close to 3,000.
Whatever the actual number was, though, there’s no question that the atmosphere was absolutely electric, and it provided the perfect backdrop for the championship game.
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Many teams annually bring something unique to the table at the 1A tournament – be it the way they play on the court, the type of kids they have on their team or the sort of community that’s supporting them.
One such example is Whitehorse. Whether it’s the 1A girls tournament or 1A boys tournament, the Raiders seemingly always bring the same things to the postseason games they participate in. They play a free-flowing style of basketball that’s always fun to watch, they themselves always seem to have fun on the court and the people that come to watch them always do a stellar job of pulling for their players.
Whitehorse’s presence at this tournament is just one of the things that makes this tournament what it is, and it’s always a blast whenever they’re on the court. This week, folks at the Sevier Valley Center got to see the Raiders four times, as they bounced back from a heart-breaking loss on Day 1 to come through and win the consolation bracket Saturday afternoon.
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Finally, I’d just like to give some props to my buddy Brad James for providing me with stats throughout the tournament. The SVC staff does an excellent job of getting us media members copies of the official book after each game. But Brad – with his trusty laptop in tote – is there to track every shot, rebound, steal, assist and block, and the complete boxscores that he provides for me – and for the other medeia members – always help immensely.