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Show 0 R E M TIMES Thursday, January 25, 2007 Brian Hassler The Cheap Seats COMMUNITY SPORTS, PEOPLE AND OUTDOOR FUN Page 8 Wolverines could Neil K. Warner I the niiilh. Six home games and five road parries left for the L'VSC men's basket hall team, with 12 wins already in the Ixxiks It 's not only possible, but it 's highly likely. As Utah Valley State prepares pre-pares for a two-game road trip to play North and South Dakota Da-kota this weekend, the magic numler is eight to reach the 20-win plateau L'VSC, in its fourth year of Division I play, still playing on the shackles and chains of NCAA's provisional eriod, win 20 games? Preposterous. Maybe not. The Wolverines need to go H-.'f in their final 11 games to win 20 games. When asked about reaching the 20-win milestone, coach l)ick llunsaker refused to look that far ahead. "We have one game to play. South Dakota State," llunsaker llunsa-ker said South Dakota is UVSC's next test. The Wolverines will plav at South Dakota State on Thursday. The .lac krabbits have a I K record (,'VSCthen plays at North Dakota Slate (KMi) on Saturday. While I lunsaker may le doing do-ing his Im-sI to keep his team from looking tin) far ahead. Ryan Toolson, the team's lead .)) y'js t LI Ik i1 COBB CONDIENorth County A swarm of Orem defenders, including Briunne Lursen, right, and Delyse Downey (20) chase down I'rovo's Amber liosco on u fust break during Friday's game. Balanced scoring lifts Orem past Provo in Region 7 Jordan Christiansen There were referees, coaches, coach-es, players, two baskets and a ball all ready for a game Friday Fri-day night. But the Orem Tigers made sure it was no contest from the very beginning, defeating Region Re-gion 7 foe Provo. 7146 in Region Re-gion 7 girls basketball action. The Tigers were running smoothly on all cylinders for most of the night, scoring from inside and outside and establishing estab-lishing their preferred tempo of the game. Early in the first quarter, Delyse Downey was the first to get hot. scoring eight points, including two 3-pointers, 3-pointers, to push Orem ahead 16-9. Downey, who had somewhat some-what of an off-game for the rest of the night, still scored 13 points. But Downey also had plenty of help. Three other Tigers Bruin girls outscore Spanish Fork 34-11 in second NUK1H (, 01IN1V A strong second-half effort helped the Mountain View girls basketball team pick up its second Region 4 victory vic-tory on Tuesday night, as the Bruins topped Spanish Fork 52-35. Alyssa Olsen led all scorers with 14 points and Allison Perkins had 12 points to lead Mountain View (2-13, 2-3). For Spanish Fork (3-13, 0- ing scorer, believes the goal of a 20-win season is within reach. "We absolutely feel like we can do it. We've teen lxk-ing lxk-ing at the schedule. We know we're going out there and playing all the independent teams," he said. "We're sure we have a chance against every single one of them. We know that North and South Dakota have had great games against Marquette and Butler, but we still feel that we'll be able to play our own game and not get mixed into theirs, and we'll win at least 20." II L'VSC can hold serve at home, the Wolverines would need to win just two of their five road games to reach the 20-win plateau. After the Da-kotas Da-kotas trip, the remaining road games are at II'FW (7-1 1), Texas Pan American ( 10-8) and at New Jersey Institute CM r). I UVSC top Independent men's program: With conference play under way around the country, UVSC will begin playing play-ing a portion of its schedule against the other Division I independents teams. That's good news for the Wolverines, who have the best record of all the independent teams this year at 12-(i. North Dakota State (KMi) has the next lest record, and the Bison Bi-son have wins over Marquette and lYinceton. X i ff scored in double figures, with Natasha Martin and Brianne Larsen finishing with 19 points apiece. Larsen scored 10 of those points in the second quarter quar-ter alone, fueling a 154 run that put Orem up 35-18. "We tell them if you've got an open kxjk, go ahead and bust it," Orem coach Ross Reed said. "The beautiful thing about our kids is that we have more than one kid who can score." Orem's Jessica Saliby made her presence felt on the defensive defen-sive end, nabbing six steals and six rebounds to go along with 10 points. "Jessica Saliby is a rebounding rebound-ing machine," said Reed. "She loves to rebound. She got some help. We had a good balanced effort tonight." Amber Bosco scored 1 1 points for Provo and teammate Melisa Chamberlain hit three treys to finish with 11 also. Orem is in first place in 5), Jenna Johnson scored 13 points and shot 5-for-7 from the free throw line. rewind M00NTAIN VIEW (52) Olsen 14 Stroshine 3. Nuplmger 2 Knell 4, Perkins 12 Tressler 8, Williams 6 Madsen 2 Totals 14 19-29 52 SPANISH FORK (35) Anderson 6. Walker 3, Johnson 13. Scotield 3. Hales 4, Sanborn 6 Totals 10 11-21 35 Mountain View g 10 21 13 52 Spanim Fork 8 16 4 7 35 3-point goals Mountain View 4 (Olson 2. Perkins 2). reach the 20-win "Once you do have some success against someone, they're going to come out and prepare and spend summer sum-mer hours to try and figure out ways to better you," llunsaker said. "As we enter this stage of the year with 11 independent games left, we need to hone in on our fundamentals, funda-mentals, and our basics, and concentrate on what got us the success we've enjoyed." Last year UVSC was 8-3 against other independent teams and overall the Wolverines Wolver-ines are 234 against independent indepen-dent schools. So is UVSC the top men's basketball independent schxl? "I don't make that judgment. judg-ment. We just play the next game. I don't declare anything," any-thing," llunsaker said. "North Dakota State's had great wins, South Dakota State's had good wins. IPFW's had good wins. I think UC Davis knocked off the top team in the Big West (Conference), so I can't really say that." I Toolson second in the nation in free throw percentage: Ryan Toolson made his only free throw attempt on Saturday night against Johnson and Wales. He is now an amazing 53-of-54 from the free throw line for a percentage of 98.1, second in the nation. "My dad mentions to me See UVSC, Page 9 'i-Xi-'M' 1 Region 7 at 3-0, 104 overall and are beating their region opponents by an average of 25.3 points per game, at times looking as good as the team that won the state championship champion-ship last year. But Reed insists his team isn't thinking repeat quite yet. "We don't look past the next game," Reed said. "We just try to show up and do the best we can. We've got great teams in our region. It's early. Hopefully we'll make it to the state tournament and see what happens. But we've got a lot of games to play before then." PR0V0 (46) Chamberlain 1 1 A Bosco 1 1 C Nelson 5 K Nelson 4, Kuctiar 4 Chadwck 3, Ika 2 Werner 2. Fa atoale 2. Cox 2 Totals 16 11-18 OREM (71) Martin 19. Larsen 19, Downey 13. Salirjy 12, Sagers 4. Don 2, Thomas 2 Totals 24 19-31 Provo 14 6 15 11 46 Orem 22 17 17 15 71 3 point goals Provo 3 iChamberiam 31 Orem 4 iLarsen 2. Downey 2 Spanish Fork 4 (Anderson 2, Johnson 2) I Pleasant Grove 53, Mountain Moun-tain View 34: At Pleasant Grove, Kristy Giles scored 23 points and pulled down eight rebounds to lead Pleasant Grove (7-8, 2-2) past Mountain View (1-13, 1-3) on Jan. 19 in Region 4 basketball. basket-ball. Alyssa Olsen led Mountain I t "" Jf I.Lm., I m, -i-yiMMry ' Kiaj" - " ..';J, COBB CONDIENorth County UVSC's Ryan Toolson scores on a reverse layup against the Johson & Wales Wildcats on Jan. 20 at the McKay Events Center. Orem High girls turn expected classic into rout Brian Hassler NORTH COUNTY According to the guys at Comcast, this was to be the game of the week. Two teams, Orem and Provo, both undefeated in Region 7 play girls basketball, basket-ball, both looking stand all alone at the top of league standings. Orem, led by Jessica Saliby, Delyse Downey and Jamie Sagers, would be going go-ing toe-to-toe with Provo's Amber Bosco and Melisa Chamberlain. Instead of a classic clash worthy of game-of-the-week notoriety, the Orem Tigers came out firing and didn't stop until the game was all but over. End result: Orem 71, Provo 46. It wasn't supposed to end like that. Provo entered the game not only 2-0 in Region 7, but 10-2 overall, in comparison to Orem's 2-0, 94 record heading into the game. The Bulldogs brought a tough, pressing defense to the game and stayed close to Orem in the first few minutes of play, tying the score at 6-6. But things began to go wrong for Provo midway through the first quarter when Orem's Natasha Martin grabbed three offensive of-fensive rebounds, as well as a boatload of boards from the defensive side, and Orem jumped out to a 20-9 lead. Downey lit things up from 2-point land and Orem's Stessie Dort came up with a solid pass inside to push Orem ahead 22-9 before the Bulldogs made their own run and cut Orem's lead to 22-14. For Provo, things were only getting worse, as View with 11. MOUNTAIN VIEW (34) Olsen 1 1, Stroshine 5, Ruplmger 3. Domingo 5. Tressler 6, Williams 4. Totals 13 5-13 34 PLEASANT GROVE (53) K Carter 6. Dorais 5. Ireland 2 Dahl 6. Miles 3. K Giles 23. W Giles 8 Totals 19 9-12 53. Mountain View 5 8 10 11 34 Pleasant Grove 11 20 6 16 53 3-pomt goals Mountain View 3 (Olsen 2. Domingo), Pleasant Grove 5 IK Carter 2. Dorais. Miles. W Giles) Boys basketball I Pleasant Grove 74, Mountain View 52: The Vikings subdued plateau HA '1i g 'iHiiii lllllll,r"j Orem's offense never solely relied on one player. "The beautiful thing about our girls is that more than one player can score," said Orem coach Ross Reed. "But we've still got a long way to go before the state tournament." tourna-ment." And score they did. Martin continued to put points on the board, finishing finish-ing the game with 19 and set up the outside shooting of Brianne Larsen. Larsen started off the season sea-son a bit slower than many expected her to but Friday's game was just what Orem needed to see as Larsen added add-ed 19 points of her own. "Natasha has great hops and it was a good night for her," said Reed. "We talk all the time about Brianne. She's a junior and has a nice shot. She busted those three's and had a good night." In all, it was a better night than most could have imagined imag-ined possible this early in region play. Orem, with four players scoring in double figures, and as dominating a performance perfor-mance as one could expect, showcased a team that is certainly on track for a deep run into the state tournament. tourna-ment. Thus far Orem has beat the second and third best teams in Region 7 but Reed wasn't too keen on discussing discuss-ing the possibility of going undefeated in region play. After all, there's the focus needed to win out the rest of region as well as those pesky pes-ky state tournament games. With the way his team played against Provo, maybe going undefeated in region play isn't as impossible as it seems. half to earn region victory the Bruins in a Region 4 game at Pleasant Grove on Jan. 19. The contest opened with Bruin Greg May receiving a tipoff. Craig Tucker stole the ball from him and connected a pass to C.J. Wilcox for a 3-point 3-point bucket. Holden Jasper stepped forward to pace the Bruins offense. His first bucket enabled en-abled teammate Tanner Young to tie the score at three on a foul shot. Wilcox broke the LESSONS IN CHILI, BUZZERS, ETC. Just because you have plenty of chili doesn't mean that you should dump it on everything every-thing you plan to eat. That little nugget of truth came into my possession posses-sion Monday evening when I'd produced a meal that included a couple of hamburgers (courtesy (cour-tesy of my George Foreman GrUI(, three hot dogs (courtesy of my microwave) and a frozen fro-zen bag of fries. Amazing that one family-sized family-sized can of chili could cover all of that, but it did and I proceeded to eat everything in sight. It's important to note that my wife was out of town, and after eating all of that it was probably a good thing that she was 500 miles away. The point to such a lesson, aside from cutting hack on my chili intake, was that the past week was filled with lessons learned and new ideas. One that took place before my adventures with jalapeno-hot jalapeno-hot chili was the idea that one shouldn't attend a high school basketball game with a headache. head-ache. But there I was Friday at Orem High School watching the Orem girls pound the Provo girls into oblivion. It wasn't the fact that Orem won 7146 that made the night so hard for a chubby sports-writer sports-writer with a headache it was that darn buzzer. During the JV game between be-tween Orem and Provo, the faithful buzzer-button pusher at the scorers table proceeded to blast that pesky buzzer at every opportunity. Even when an Orem girl was shooting a free throw, the buzzer sounded to interrupt play. If the ball went out of bounds, the buzzer sounded. When a coach stood up to point to a spot on the fkxir, the buzzer sounded. Last night, I took my dog outside and instead of barking, bark-ing, all I heard was the buzzer. Whether its the toilet, the microwave mi-crowave or the waffle-maker, I hear nothing but a buzzer sounding. Lesson learned next time I'll take some Tylenol before going to a game. The Timpanogos girls basketball team has taught lessons, going 4-1 in Region 4 play so far to prove that there isn't much to learn from non-region non-region play. The Timberwolves, who entered region play with a losing record overall, still have a losing record overall as of Wednesday, but are in second place in league play and looking good for the state tournament. Orem's girls have been dishing dish-ing out lessons of their own, lighting up opponents like a Christmas tree and turning the Region 7 title chase into a one-team one-team show. While Orem's boys have one loss to their credit, a heart-breaker heart-breaker to Lehi, they have still run together a solid 2-1 record re-cord in Region 7 play and my money says they beat Lehi the second time around. Much as I'd love to further discuss the lessons learned from the past week, the buzzer has sounded and it's time to head off to another fun game filled with buzzers, buzzer-beaters buzzer-beaters and a nice plate of chili-nachos with extra buzzers on top. Where's the Tylenol? I Brian Hassler can he reached at brianhasslerfs hotmail. com. tie. The Vikings tightened their hold on the lead through shots from Tallon Robertson, Zach Brady and Tucker. The Bruins used Jasper as their chief scorer in the first half, keeping the first half a close battle. In the first quarter, quar-ter, Jasper enabled them to get within 16-9 by the first period break. He really heated up during See BRUINS, Page 9 |