THOMAS — Pick your poison.

    The defending 3A state champion Snake River Panthers are chock-full of it. If one player isn’t scoring points and beating opponents, another is.

    Saturday night against visiting Sugar-Salem, Snake River’s balanced scoring was in full force as the Panthers defeated the Diggers 55-45.

    “You can’t key on one person because I have a lot of kids that can step up on any given night and score,” said Snake River head coach Bob Coombs. “Last night Trey Albertson was the leading scorer. Tonight it was Brad Coombs.”

    Brad, the coach’s son, dropped 14 points for the Panthers, 10 of which came from the free throw line as Sugar-Salem was forced to foul to extend the fourth quarter.

    “At the end of the game our plan was to get the ball in Brad’s hands,” Coombs said. “That’s who we wanted on the line.”

    But it was Snake River’s defense that propelled them to its second win in as many nights. The Panthers held Sugar-Salem to two first-quarter points and led 16-2 entering the second.

    “We went to a zone,” Coombs said. “They have one really good 3-point shooter and I thought we could slow him down in a zone. At first it did, but they started figuring it out and started hitting some outside shots. We had to make some more adjustments.”

    The Diggers found a groove after the opening period and scored even with the Panthers the rest of the way. The early deficit was too much to overcome.

    “Our team goal is to keep opponents under 50 points,” Coombs said. “Any time we do that I figure we have a chance to win because I think we can get up into the mid-50s and 60s. We have a lot of kids that can score.”

    Kade Harral added 11 points for Snake River while Kade Keller and Curtis Keller had nine apiece.

    After losing a number of key players from last year’s state championship squad, Snake River (9-1) finds itself in prime position to repeat.

    “I’m really happy, especially this week with the way we played,” Coombs said. “We are headed in the right direction, right where we want to be this time of year.

    “We’re a lot better now than we were when we started.”

    The Panthers hit the court Thursday as they take on South Fremont in St. Anthony at 7:30 p.m.

Snake River 55, Sugar-Salem 45

Sugar-Salem    2    13    11    19 — 45

Snake River    16    13    11    15 — 55

Sugar-Salem — Connor Stoddard 1 1-1 3, Gunner Anderson 5 0-1 13, Josh Shirley 2 0-1 5, Drake Cordon 1 0-0 2, Cyrus Kidd 2 0-0 5, Ryan Hawkes 0 1-2 1, Tim Fuller 6 4-6 16.

Snake River — Klay Keller 1 0-0 2, Tyler Coombs 1 0-2 3, Kade Keller 3 2-7 9, Kade Harral 4 1-1 11, Trey Albertson 1 5-7 7, Brad Coombs 2 10-11 14, Curtis Keller 4 1-3 9.