Rocky Mountain, Borah boys basketball teams clinch state tournament berths
No. 1 Rocky Mountain and No. 4 Borah will face off in the 5A District Three boys basketball championship game.
Rocky Mountain defeated Eagle 68-41, and Borah defeated Meridian 63-44, in the district semifinal games Saturday. The championship game will be held at 7 p.m. Friday at Rocky Mountain.
Rocky Mountain and Borah guaranteed themselves spots in the state tournament with their wins, but Eagle and Meridian will have to win their next games to reach state. Eagle will play against the Centennial-Timberline winner, while Meridian will face off against the winner of Skyview-Boise.
Rocky Mountain 68, Eagle 41
Rocky Mountain outscored Eagle 20-6 in the first quarter and never looked back as the Grizzlies cruised to their 18th straight win. Rocky Mountain’s only loss this season came in Utah against Wasatch Academy on December 7. Against Idaho teams, Rocky Mountain is now 22-0.
While Rocky Mountain’s offense hummed along in the game — the Grizzlies shot 43 percent from the field and hit seven 3-pointers — it was their defense that turned this game into a route.
Rocky Mountain held Eagle to 6-for-21 shooting from the field in the first half. Eagle was prompted by the crowd to “wake up” in what was a very sleepy first half. While Eagle eventually picked its game up, scoring nearly twice as much in the second half, it was a case of too little, too late. Rocky Mountain had already sealed the game.
“The kids came out and had really good energy defensively,” Rocky Mountain coach Dane Roy said. “I think that’s where we really started to pull away. We were getting two, three, four stops in a row and, when we do that consistently, we are really tough to beat.”
Rocky Mountain’s top player and the fourth-highest scorer in the conference, Townsend Tripple, put up 17 points, four rebounds and four assists while only playing 24 minutes. Roy took out his entire starting unit a few minutes into the fourth quarter.
“This gives us some confidence,” Tripple said. “We still have tough teams ahead of us, so it definitely makes us feel good as a team. I feel like we’re going to come out and keep fighting for it with the same energy and passion as we did tonight.”
Straton Rogers gave Rocky Mountain 10 points and five rebounds, while Cooper Frith, the conference’s third-highest scorer, added nine points. On the opposite side, Jaden Carter led Eagle with 15 points. Tanner Hayhurst, who averages 22.1 points per game, was held to only two points on 0-for-8 shooting. He only made two of his six free throws.
Roy knows that this isn’t the ceiling for his team.
“We just need to get better,” Roy said. “We are still not our best selves and hopefully by the next two weeks we will be.”
“Nothing comes easy from here on out,” Tripple said. “We have tough competitions ahead of us so we just have to keep fighting. We’ve beat these teams in the past, but it doesn’t mean a thing.”
Borah 63, Meridian 44
The game started out relatively close. Borah led by only three points after the first quarter, but it all went downhill from there for Meridian. Borah went on a 6-0 run near the beginning of the second quarter that was capped by a breakaway dunk by Boise State football signee Austin Bolt. The crowd jumped to its feet and applauded as Borah got back on defense.
This sequence was the beginning of the end for Meridian’s district championship hopes. When the two teams played on Jan. 31, Meridian came back and won after trailing for the first 30 minutes. This time, Borah made sure to never take its foot off the pedal.
“Everyone kind of had the attitude that we’re not going to give this one up,” Bolt said. “We kept scoring and kept playing good defense and beat them by 20 points.”
From the 7-minute mark in the second quarter, to 6:03 in the fourth quarter, Meridian only scored one field goal. Borah dug in on the defensive end and held Donovan Sanor and Brody Rowbury, two top-seven scorers in the conference, in check.
Sanor finished with 16 points after scoring 10 in the final frame, largely after the game was too far out of hand. Rowbury didn’t score a single point and only had five rebounds. He was also forced into committing five turnovers.
“Meridian is a good offensive team,” Borah coach Jeremy Dennis said. “We knew that we’d have to slow them down. Our intensity, our being connected with each other and talking on defense, we did a good job and that’s the kind of things you have to do against Meridian.”
Bolt finished with 26 points, 15 rebounds and three assists for Borah. Isaac Dewberry (14 points) and Luke Hoetker (10 points) were the other two Borah players who finished in double figures. Borah outrebounded Meridian 27-16.
Next up, Borah will face Rocky Mountain. Dennis has one thing he wants to see from his team in that game.
“Fight,” Dennis said. “Fight and not backing down. That’s the only thing we can ask them to do. Rocky is a great team.”
Bolt will try to soak in every moment of his last postseason as a Borah basketball player.
“I’m going to miss the practices and shoot-arounds,” Bolt said. “I’m going to miss bonding with the whole team, but it’s not over yet. We still have a couple more weeks of basketball and I’m going to try and cherish the rest of it.”
This story was originally published February 22, 2020 at 4:08 PM.