By Brian Shaw | [email protected]

Over the past three years, the Bingham Miners basketball team has been chipping away at elite status.

It started two years ago when the Miners were 15-9 and region champions; they just had to share that title with rival Copper Hills.

Last year the Miners went 17-6 and won a region title outright, but were dumped at the quarterfinals of the 6A state championships.

But this year marked the culmination of a three-year effort to bring the Bingham boys basketball program back to prominence and saw the Miners clinch their third consecutive Region 3 title at Copper Hills Feb. 15. Ahead 33-27 at the break the Miners hung on for a tight 61-59 win. Senior Devin Carlson led Bingham with 18 points, while sophomore Ace Reiser had 17 and senior Kam Dupaix 10.

The Miners were 21-2 and the No. 1 ranked RPI team in all of Class 6A heading into the state tournament.

Going into the playoffs—which occur after press time—the Miners have already had their best season in years.

It seems like such a far cry from those days in which the Miners were lucky to crack the .500 mark, when making the state tournament was little more than a pipe dream.

But these Bingham boys under head coach Kyle Straatman [career record: 52-17] are beginning to look like those teams that gave the Miners two state titles in a row in 2016 and 2017 under the direction of former coach Jake Schroeder.

This Miners team is also balanced in terms of scoring the basketball; Dupaix may lead the team with 13.4 points a game, but senior Luke Leatherwood isn’t far behind at 12.8 and fellow senior Devin Carlson (11.3) rounds out the players who score in double figures for Bingham.

Lest you think that’s all the Miners have, however, you would be mistaken. This Miners team is truly selfless with Ace Reiser (9.9) and Tyler Newbold (9.1) also nearing double-figure averages. Across the board it is such a balanced squad that all five aforementioned players also top the team in assists and four of the five starters share the wealth at least two or more times per game.

The level of play the Miners are showcasing this year hasn’t been seen since Schroeder departed for an assistant coaching opportunity at Dixie State University.

Six years removed from their last state title, it is an uncommon dedication to teamwork and nice size from four of five senior starters who are 6’3” or taller that had these Miners thinking of bigger things ahead.