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Highland Boys Basketball Team Wins in the End

Mar 10, 2016 10:45AM ● By Bryan Scott

By Tyson Peterson | [email protected]

Sugar House - Highland boys basketball faced off against Bonneville on Friday, Jan. 29, in a home game that stayed close right down to the last seconds, finishing 68-65. After being down 29-39 at half time, Highland fought their way back to win by three points.

“We knew they were going to play physical, so we knew we’d have to come out and be physical with them, and just play hard,” Rick Schmidt said of preparing for the game against Bonneville.

Schmidt, a senior and power forward, is the team captain for Highland. Schmidt was among the top scorers in the game, but with minutes still to go, he got his fifth foul and was forced to leave the game. Schmidt has scored 246 points with a 51-percent field goal percentage during his career at Highland. 

“I feel like I was getting hammered, but that’s the way the game goes. I think some of the fouls were pretty weak, but that’s the way they called them. You just have to battle through it and let the refs do their job,” he said.

Due to the physical nature of the game, Highland’s top scorers had four fouls apiece or more. Schmidt was the only player to get five. Many of the fouls were in the first half before Highland left to the locker room down by 10 points.

“We knew we needed to rebound more. We needed to improve on that and step it up. We had a lot of guys step up. Brevin Elsholz really stepped up, and Ryan Lambson did a great job as well,” Schmidt said.

Lambson, also a senior and point guard, played many of the minutes against Bonneville. He, along with Elsholz and Schmidt, were the top scorers in the game. Lambson has scored 122 points with a 51-percent field goal percentage during his career at Highland, while Elsholz has scored 189 points with a 44-percent field goal average.

“We know that everyone in our region is really good. I mean it’s a jungle. I think we played them a little lighter in the beginning, but we came back, and we’ll be back again next week,” Lambson said. “When we started banking those threes, I kind of looked and thought, this is bizarre; we might win this. It was kind of up and down the whole game up until the end, and that’s when I thought we might actually win this.” 

Head coach James Boyce applauded the team’s success.

“To win games like these, you have to go out of your way. You have to go out and do it, and that’s what [the] guys did,” Boyce said.