At 6-foot-11, Richard Harward leads an extremely tall Orem squad that has championship aspirations.
Photo by Dave Argyle
It only takes a few inches for
Orem to stand out from the basketball crowd.
The Tigers are considered one of the early Class 4A championship favorites in large part because they tower over practically every opponent. Orem boasts one of the tallest collections of frontcourt players in recent Utah high school basketball history.
Six players on the Orem varsity roster measure from 6-foot-5 to 7-foot-1.
Richard Harward, a 6-foot-11 center, is the team's second leading scorer (13.0 points per game) and leading rebounder (9.3 per game).
Combined with a solid backcourt led by
Will Clark and
Hayden Young, Orem creates all sorts of matchup problems on offense and defense.
It isn't a simple matter of packing players around the rim or locking down the perimeter to cage these Tigers.
"We have so many different threats that they can't just guard one person," said Clark, who leads Orem in scoring with 14.7 points per game. "They have to worry about the whole team and how each person contributes."
A height advantage only carries a team so far in some situations. One challenge Orem has faced this season is striking a balance between size and speed.
Orem plays in Region 7 — a region heavily populated by guard-oriented teams. It isn't unusual for the Tigers to see a region opponent trot out a starting lineup with four or five guards. When faced with teams who play small ball, Orem is forced to make adjustments to compensate for a platoon of smaller and quicker guards.
Defensively, Orem often employs a 2-3 zone rather going man-to-man to combat the other team's speed on the perimeter. Offensively, the Tigers focus on pounding the ball inside and making the most of their height advantage.
"Since we have so much height, we want to focus on going inside and kicking out," said Harward, a senior who is committed to play for Utah Valley. "Keep doing that until we get an open shot."
Trusting the offense to the bigs can be tricky at times.
Harward is the only frontcourt player who had any serious varsity experience coming into the season. It means that Orem is a little rough around the edges offensively compared to last season.
"Sometimes, it's hard to use all that size," Orem coach Golden Holt said. "Obviously, they're big and can do things up around the rim, but they also have limitations out on the perimeter. So we're trying to find a balance between taking advantage of that size and not letting that limit us."
Make no mistake. Orem is finding a balance. The Tigers are tied with Olympus and Maple Mountain for the best record in Class 4A. They boast one of Class 4A's best defenses, allowing an average of 45.9 points per game.
It has the Tigers looking forward to avenging heartbreak at the state tournament. Orem stood on the cusp of winning a state title in 2014, only to fall to Bountiful 44-43 in the Class 4A championship game after current BYU forward Dalton Nixon missed a pair of free throws with two seconds left.
The pain of that moment still resonates in 2014, and Orem is determined to use size and other natural advantages to finish the job.
"We're all shooting for the state championship," junior forward
Noah Johnson said. "That's our number one goal."
John Coon covers Utah high school sports for MaxPreps. You can contact him at john_coon@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @johncoonsports.
