All the early morning shootarounds. All the freshmen and sophomores getting significant varsity minutes. All the heartbreak at state tournaments — the woulda-coulda-shouldas. All the injuries. 

Everything you can think of, has happened to these Bingham Miners these past few years. 

But now the youngsters are seniors. Their injuries have healed up. Their lessons have been learned, the hard way. 

Top players, Parker Snedaker and Luke West, are ready for their final seasons at the school. They’re already leading the team in scoring, by a country mile. 

In fact, Snedaker is averaging a career-high 21 points per game, and in just seven games is already two-thirds of the way to all the points he scored, last season. 

The reason? Efficiency. 

Snedaker is shooting 52% from the field, thus far. He scored 16 points in a losing effort to open the season against Timpview Nov. 18. At American Fork in a 63-59 Nov. 21 win, though, the Bingham senior again dumped in 16 points. 

His counterpart and longtime teammate, senior Luke West, scored a season-high 30 to lead Bingham, who took an early 31-25 lead into the locker room at half, and held on for a 63-59 victory. 

For West, it was his best performance since a serious injury was suffered last year in a Las Vegas holiday tournament, one that kept him out until the state tournament. He’s averaging 18 points so far, this season.

The story of the season thus far has been that if West can’t get buckets for the Miners, and that’s been rare considering the senior point guard is ranked No. 11 in shots made in Utah, then Snedaker is the player stepping up to fulfill that need. 

That was the case for Snedaker on Nov. 25, who dumped 28 on Olympus in a thrilling 80-79 overtime win. He also had season-highs in rebounds and assists with six apiece, shot a whopping 73% from the field, and brought Bingham back from a halftime deficit. 

At a holiday tournament after the Thanksgiving break, Bingham played Rock Canyon (Colorado), a game in which Snedaker had a rough night (17 points) in a 75-69 loss, Dec. 4. Sure enough, West tried coming to the rescue, scoring 26 points. Junior Logan Goncalves added a season-high 12 rebounds for Bingham. 

And yet, the Miners may have saved their best game of the season, a day later. 

Bingham withstood a furious third-quarter rally to upend Lehi, 68-63. What made this game unique for the Miners Dec. 5, was that Snedaker (34 points, 10 rebounds) and West (24/8) delivered in a game where the team needed both seniors to ball out. They did, shooting a mesmerizing 67% and 56% from the field, respectively. 

On Dec. 6 to close out this holiday tournament, Bingham defeated Lone Peak 60-51, and got contributions from not only Snedaker (26 points, 5-of-10 from three) and West (14 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists) but senior Denzel Peoples, who poured in six points and sophomore Carson Edmunds, who cashed in all four free throws. 

That win pushed the Miners forward, but they fell backward some in a 61-53 loss at Davis, Dec. 9. Widely considered one of the state’s best, the Darts surged ahead after three quarters and dropped Bingham to a 4-3 record at press time. 

In that game, the Miners got contributions from everywhere: Snedaker (11), West (10), Goncalves (9), and also saw juniors Owen Bagley and Derek Peterson emerge—they scored seven apiece. 

It’s the kind of game that Bingham will have to vary as the season goes on, and the burden that Snedaker and West will have to shoulder, as they head back into the Tarkanian Classic in Las Vegas in late December.