Of the eight remaining teams in the 4A & 5A Utah state basketball championships, five are from Utah County.
That’s exactly 62.5 percent of the final eight teams in the largest divisions hailing from 18 percent of the state’s population.
So, what’s in the Utah Valley water that generates over-sized 17-year-olds who can ball?
Players like Lone Peak’s TJ Haws (who had a new school record 42 points in tonight’s 82-79 win over Bingham), Orem’s Dalton Nixon (who scored 18 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in the Tigers 48-37 win vs. Kearns), American Fork’s 6-foot-10 Ryan Andrus and Pleasant Grove’s Matt Conway (who scored 25 points in the Viking’s 78-55 win over Alta this afternoon) are each raising the bar of prep basketball in the Beehive state.
Two Utah Valley teams will meet in a 4A semifinal Friday at 2:30 p.m., Orem and Springville. American Fork and Pleasant Grove will play in a 5A semifinal at 7:30 p.m. Lone Peak is the only Utah County high school not playing a fellow Utah County team. The Knights will meet Davis in its semifinal tomorrow at 5:50 p.m. at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.
For more information on the best basketball players from Utah County see this article written on Feb. 20th by Neil Warner.