Springville played its best basketball in crunch time Tuesday night on the road against Pleasant Grove, beating the Vikings 61-53 in overtime. In the Region 7 schools’ lone scheduled meeting this season, the Red Devils held their hosts scoreless in overtime, remaining poised in the most important stretch of the contest to improve to 2-0 in region play. “I’m just excited,” Springville head coach Justin Snell said after the victory.
Springville played its best basketball in crunch time Tuesday night on the road against Pleasant Grove, beating the Vikings 61-53 in overtime.
In the Region 7 schools’ lone scheduled meeting this season, the Red Devils held their hosts scoreless in overtime, remaining poised in the most important stretch of the contest to improve to 2-0 in region play.
“I’m just excited,” Springville head coach Justin Snell said after the victory. “I’m happy that our guys showed up defensively. We put a ton of pressure on our guys to make sure that that’s what we’re going to be known for, so on a night where we don’t shoot great and (our) offense is out of rhythm and PG does a great job of just mucking up that side of the floor, (I love) that we can rely on the fact that we can get stops and rebound to win games and we don’t just have to be an offensive sided team.”
Springville star senior center Jamyn Sondrup played a huge role in the Red Devils’ gritty win, clogging the paint, rebounding and scoring nearly half of his team’s points to ultimately will it to victory.
Sondrup ended the night with a game-high 27 points, including all of Springville’s points in the fourth quarter and half of its overtime tally.
A pair of pivotal free throws from the big man in the extra time gave the Red Devils a four point lead with 1:10 to play and shifted the pressure to a Vikings squad that had gone cold on offense.
“(Jamyn) is so big for us,” Snell said. “He’s so skilled. There were multiple things that he did tonight that just pushed things over the top.
“He got offensive rebounds to put back in, he drilled a … big (3), he rebounded the ball, he hit two free throws to put us up two possessions. He is a really good basketball player.”
The Red Devils star made his presence felt on defense as well, helping Springville hold the Vikings to seven points in the fourth before shutting them out in overtime.
Snell couldn’t have been more pleased with how his team performed defensively from the fourth quarter on.
“We got six more games till state and we’re trying to get on this upswing and momentum and peak,” he said. “From a defensive side, those were our best 12 minutes of the season, and to have them second half of the season is just great for us.”
While the Red Devils have begun hitting their stride in the final stretch of the year, the Vikings have been trending in the opposite direction of late.
Last Friday, Springville won its initial Region 7 contest in a blowout over Spanish Fork while Pleasant Grove fell by two in its opener against Wasatch.
Springville will return home for a meeting with Wasatch next Tuesday, and Pleasant Grove plays on the road against Orem Friday.
The two games are each scheduled to tip off at 7 p.m.
Category: General Sports
