Great Clips of the Week: Mountain View senior shatters backboard with epic alley-oop

BREAKING BACKBOARDS — Before high schools and college took a brief moratorium to celebrate the holiday season, they took a trip to holiday tournaments, postseason bowl games, and celebrated a new class of incoming recruits with the NCAA’s second-ever early signing period.

And boy, were there highlights to come out of it.

Here are a few of our favorites from the not-so-dead period in high school and college sports. As always, click the video above for more of our Great Clips of the Week.

Shattered glass

It’s been nearly a month since the start of the 2018-19 Utah high school basketball season, and you’ve probably seen some big wins, a few losses (only seven teams have yet to experience defeat statewide), and plenty of highlights across the Beehive State.

But you probably haven’t seen a highlight quite like what Junior Hayes did in Mountain View’s game at Cyprus last week.

Watch the 6-foot-2 senior go up for an alley-oop — and come down with several loose chunks of the backboard, as the glass shatters around him.

Hayes had 16 points to lead all scorers — but Cyprus got the last laugh; the Pirates won 54-46 to move to 4-3 on the year. The Bruins fell to 5-3 with the loss.

He wasn’t the only local with a monster dunk.

Trey, with the jam

By this time next year, Trey Stewart will be serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

By this time in the 2021-22 season, he’ll be a freshman on the Utah Valley men’s basketball team, the same school where his father Ray played in 1989-90.

But by this time right now, the 6-foot-3, 185-pound combo guard is throwing down nasty dunks with his Cavemen teammates.

Here’s another angle, in case you missed it the first time.

Remember those seven teams we mentioned that have yet to taste defeat in 2018-19? American Fork is one of them. Stewart, who averages 13.7 points, 3.0 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game, has the Cavemen out to an 8-0 start, including wins over Bountiful, Fremont and Bingham in the Utah Elite 8.

The Cavemen will play in a tournament in Mesa, Arizona beginning Thursday.

Coach O wins signing day

A lot of college football coaches were pleased, thrilled and overjoyed after signing a dozen or more teenage recruits who will soon be incoming freshmen at their respective universities (side note: Has a coach ever admitted that National Signing Day “didn’t quite work out the way we wanted”?)

We know this because after coaches announce however many new recruits each signing day, they all hold a press conference and talk about how the incoming class is filled with “exceptional young men,” “high-impact players,” and “just who we wanted to get” to fill any holes.

Coaches like head coach Ed Oregon, head coach at LSU. Let’s listen in on his latest press conference.

“Hey guys! I’m having a press conference, OK? Thank you!” Orgeron shouted at several players who were getting a bit too rowdy in the team’s indoor practice facility.

For your defense of the free press, Coach O, we salute you.

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