Owyhee has Idaho’s No. 1 boys and girls basketball teams. It showed why with 2 blowout wins
Owyhee entered Thursday night with Idaho’s No. 1-ranked boys and girls basketball teams. And the Storm wasted little time backing up those rankings, crushing rival Eagle in both games of the Battle for the Bolt rivalry doubleheader.
The Owyhee girls cruised past Eagle 63-43 in a matchup of the top two teams in the state media poll. The Owyhee boys then followed with a 58-35 blowout of their rival that saw both teams’ starters sit most of the fourth quarter.
The Storm also won the spirit competition, marking a clean sweep of the evening.
The No. 1 ranking and the target that comes with it represents nothing new for Owyhee’s boys basketball program, winner of two state titles and three district championships since opening four years ago. But it marks new territory for the Storm girls.
“This is our year to really show who we are,” said Owyhee senior guard Josie Davis, a four-year starter. “This was a big one tonight. We really wanted to show people why both teams — boys and girls — are No. 1 in the state for a reason.”
Talk of a state championship — or championships — remains premature. But Thursday’s dominance puts Owyhee in the conversation for a rare sweep of Idaho’s basketball state titles. No school has won both the boys and girls basketball titles in Idaho’s largest classification since Meridian in 1983.
GIRLS: OWYHEE 63, EAGLE 43
The Storm (13-1, 4-0 6A SIC) never trailed in the highly anticipated matchup, holding the 6A classification’s top offense 20 points below its season average and to 14-for-43 (33%) shooting.
Owyhee used a mix of traps, presses and hard-nosed man-to-man defense to fluster the Mustangs all night. Eagle (11-3, 2-2) entered the game with a decided size advantage in the paint. But the state’s top defense erased that edge by forcing 18 turnovers, including 11 in the first half, to build an insurmountable lead.
“I’m happy about our performance,” Owyhee coach George Rodriguez said. “The scary thing is, I feel like we can be better.”
Eagle cut the lead to 18-17 with 4:32 left in the second quarter on Peyten Taylor’s old-fashioned three-point play. But Owyhee responded by closing the half on a 16-0 run and led by double digits the rest of the way.
Mikale Roy kick-started the run with back-to-back corner 3-pointers, and Addy Wright (17 points, five steals) buried another 3 from the wing as the Storm piled on. Owyhee never slowed down, sinking 9-of-15 (60%) shots from behind the arc.
While Owyhee’s boys basketball team competed for titles the day the school opened, the Storm girls team needed to build itself from the ground up. Many of this year’s seniors started as freshmen four years ago, taking their lumps and lessons along the way. But those lumps forged a battle-tested group out to prove itself.
Riley Beck added 14 points, and Davis finished with nine points and eight assists for Owyhee, whose only loss came to Democracy Prep, the top-ranked team in Nevada, according to MaxPreps.
Thursday marked the first time the Battle for the Bolt featured both the boys and girls basketball rivalry matchups. Previously, it included only the two rivals’ boys basketball teams, giving both school’s girls squads a taste of a gym packed to the rafters.
“We haven’t had a big environment like this before,” Davis said. “You know, it’s something that we deserve. We put in a lot of work this year. We’re No. 1. So we wanted to prove to people why we’re No. 1.”
Bella Thompson led Eagle with 13 points, including 11 in the second half. And sophomore Berkley Jones added 11.
BOYS: OWYHEE 58, EAGLE 35
The ingredients for an upset were all there.
A midweek road game. A rival’s packed gym. A physical and sloppy first quarter.
But Owyhee shrugged off a slow start, mounted a 13-0 run in the second quarter and led by 13 or more points the rest of the way for another blowout win.
“I think we settled in,” Owyhee coach Andy Harrington said. “Eagle did a really good job with their physicality. I think that some of our guys needed to match that, and they did.
“... We had one turnover in the second quarter, which is why we scored at such an efficient rate.”
That efficiency remains the hallmark of another loaded squad for Owyhee (8-3, 2-0). The Storm lost a four-star recruit and another Division I signee in the offseason. But Owyhee has yet to slow down or back down from a challenge.
Owyhee may enter the new year with three losses, but those defeats came during a daunting early-season schedule. Two of those three losses were to USA Today’s No. 3- and No. 4-ranked teams in the country in Harvard-Westlake, California, and Gonzaga from the District of Columbia, respectively. The third came to Oregon’s second-ranked team, Southridge.
That meant a new roster of role players-turned-leaders needed to sink or swim. So far, they’ve swum.
“We were forced to kind of figure it out on the go,” said Boden Howell, a Rice signee who scored a game-high 19 points Thursday. “Now 11 games in, we really kind of know what we need to do to win, individually and everybody.”
That formula emerged in the second quarter after Eagle (8-3, 1-1) threw the kitchen sink at Owyhee, subbing five in and five out every few minutes in search of fresh legs. Howell started the decisive 13-0 run with a 3-pointer from the left corner, and senior Heath Sasser-Gunson capped it with a steal and two-handed dunk.
Eagle never threatened again.
“We’re getting everyone’s best shot,” Harrington said. “We’re going to continue to get that. Our guys are mature, and they expect it at this point.”
Sasser-Gunson and Logan Haustveit each added 10 points for the Storm, who finished the night with just seven turnovers despite emptying the bench in the fourth quarter.
Senior forward Andrew Palfreyman had 18 points and a game-high eight rebounds as the Mustangs’ only scorer in double figures.
This story was originally published January 10, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
