Return of the Warriors: Long-struggling Valley program shows it’s a force this season
The Meridian High boys basketball program had fallen on hard times.
The Warriors haven’t made the state tournament since 2006, the longest active drought among Idaho’s 5A programs. But they showed why they are a force to contend for a spot at state this season Tuesday, holding on to beat rival Mountain View 55-50 on the road in the annual Stinky Sneaker rivalry game.
The win lifts Meridian (9-7, 8-5 5A SIC) into sole possession of third place in the 5A Southern Idaho Conference standings with Eagle idle on Tuesday. The top four teams receive a first-round bye at the district tournament, smoothing their road to state.
“What’s happening is they are learning the things that it takes to win basketball games,” second-year Meridian coach Jeff Sanor said. “Winning is a skill. It’s like dribbling. It’s like shooting. It’s a skill you have to learn. They are dedicating themselves, and they are studying, and they are learning all the time the small little things that it takes to win basketball games.”
Meridian also won the spirit competition Tuesday for the ninth straight year. The winner of the spirit competition, not the game, gets the trophy of an old Chuck Taylor sneaker.
The rivalry game featured 10 lead changes, including five in the third quarter alone as fans from both schools packed the 2,300-seat gym at Mountain View (6-10, 4-9) to near capacity. But Meridian entered the fourth quarter with a two-point lead and never surrendered it the rest of the way.
The Warriors started a youth movement three years ago with Javen Woodall, Spencer Fair and Spencer Tolman all playing key minutes as sophomores alongside then-freshman Donovan Sanor. All that hard-earned experience paid off down the stretch.
Instead of finding ways to lose a big game, Meridian dug in to make key defensive stops, protect the ball and sink 9-of-10 free throws in the fourth quarter.
“We’ve gained a lot of experience, matured a lot as a team,” said Tolman, who scored 14 points. “We have in the past couple years let wins slip away. But as we’ve gotten older and gotten more experience, we’ve just learned to keep our heads, stay focused on the game and take it one possession at a time.”
Jeff Sanor, a former Washington and Boise State basketball player, took over the Warriors last season, and they suddenly became relevant again. Meridian posted its first winning season since 2005-06 a year ago, and it returned four starters for this season.
Fair, who also scored 14 points, said Sanor has given the Warriors a foundation to build off — teamwork and defense.
“We’re not focused about all the other stuff,” Fair said. “We’re focused on we’ve got to play together, be together. We are just one, big fist. If someone gets out of the group, we are going to fall apart. So we’ve just got to stay together.”
It’s all led to a culture change at Meridian.
“It’s not that we were expected to lose, but people wouldn’t look at us as frontrunners of, ‘Oh, they can win state,’ ” Tolman said. “It was, ‘Oh, it’s just Meridian.’ We want people to be like, ‘Oh, no. We’ve got to play Meridian.’ We want people to be almost scared of us.”
This story was originally published January 22, 2019 at 11:48 PM.