‘One more.’ Idaho’s hottest boys basketball team rolls into 5A state championship.
The Borah High crowd cheered as the clock wound down Friday, but senior guard Kyler Castro shouted a final message to the Lions’ fans.
“One more.”
Borah rallied from an early deficit to beat Rigby 72-59 in the 5A state semifinals, winning their 15th straight game and putting them one more win shy of a championship.
The Lions (23-3) face Madison (25-3) yet again in the 5A state title game at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Ford Idaho Center. The game marks the 16th trip to the state finals for both teams and their third matchup in the past two years.
Borah beat Madison in the first round at state last year, then Madison knocked off the Lions in Rexburg during this season’s opening weekend, giving both teams a shot at revenge.
[Related: 5A to 1A state brackets, scores]
“It’s going to be a fun game,” Borah senior point guard Ellis Magnuson said. “We want Madison, and Madison wants us.”
Rigby jumped out a to a 7-0 lead to open Friday’s semifinal. But the high-flying Lions answered with a 17-0 run in the second quarter to take a lead they never surrendered.
Junior forward Austin Bolt finished with a double-double of 24 points and 11 rebounds, mixing it up inside the paint with his trademark disregard for his own body. But it was the low post’s long-range shot that pushed Borah over the hump.
Bolt received a pass at the top of the key, and with the defense sagging below the free-throw line, he faked a shot. When the defense didn’t step any closer, he fired and sank his first 3-pointer since Dec. 7.
“Usually when Austin shoots a 3, he’s immediately going for the rebound because he thinks he missed,” Borah coach Jeremy Dennis joked. “But they were playing off of him, and we said if you’re open, shoot it.
“... He can make them. It’s ugly, but he can make them.”
Bolt and Magnuson combined for the next seven points, forcing a Rigby timeout. But the damage was already done.
Magnuson, an Eastern Washington commit, finished with 15 points and six assists. And DeVaughn Williams added 15 points and five rebounds as Borah kept adding to its win streak.
[Related: Fruitland, Garden Valley advance to finals]
The Lions’ last loss came on Jan. 2 with a 53-52 defeat at Timberline, the ninth-place finisher in the 10-team 5A SIC. But Bolt said that loss delivered a wakeup call key to Borah’s late-season run.
“As a team, we overlooked them,” he said. “We came out flat and they came out hungry. Honestly, that was the best thing we could have had as a team, losing to a team and in a game like that.”
MADISON 65, POST FALLS 48
Madison’s Mason McWhorter struggled in the Bobcats’ first-round win, finishing with five points on 2-for-7 shooting. But the senior made up for it Friday.
McWhorter poured in a game-high 21 points, including 19 in the first three quarters, to lift the Bobcats (25-3) into the state finals for the second time in the past four years.
Post Falls (18-8) couldn’t stay in front of McWhorter, who put on a show by either finishing at the rim, drawing a foul or both. McWhorter finished the game 6-of-8 from the field and 9-of-9 at the free-throw line.
“Today, I wanted to be more aggressive,” McWhorter said. “I know they didn’t expect that from me from yesterday’s performance, so I came out and was really aggressive to the hoop.”
Madison led by four points at halftime, then shot 69 percent (11-of-16) from the floor in the second half and 56 percent overall (18-of-32) to erase any thoughts of a Post Falls comeback.
Senior guard Spencer Hathaway added 19 points and seven rebounds for Madison, which set up a rematch with Borah after falling to the Lions 44-39 in the first round of last year’s tournament.
Madison returns 10 players from that team and Borah eight. Madison scored a 53-51 win in this season’s opening weekend. But any revenge for last year’s loss can only come at state.
“We have a chip on our shoulder, especially because we lost to Borah last year in that first game,” McWhorter said. “If we play them, we’re going to bring everything we have because we’re not losing.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2019 at 9:37 PM.
