One Valley team will play for the 5A state title. But not the one everyone expected.
Young teams full of fresh faces rarely succeed at the state tournament. But then there’s the Borah High boys basketball squad.
Graduation losses left Borah with just one starter and one other key contributor from last year’s 5A state championship game. But the Lions will get a chance to defend their title after holding off conference rival Eagle 47-43 on Friday night in the semifinals.
No. 4-ranked Borah (21-5) faces No. 3 Post Falls (22-3) at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa for a shot at a repeat championship, a feat few expected to start the season.
[Related: Title hopes end on final shot for two 4A SIC teams | 5A to 1A state tournament brackets]
“We lost a lot of seniors last year, so it was kind of doubtful, in all honesty, at the beginning of the year,” Borah senior guard Isaac Dewberry said. “It’s just exciting to see we’ve gotten the chemistry to get back here.”
The Lions bring a different squad back to the finals. Point guard Ellis Magnuson, the 5A All-Idaho Player of the Year, brought the razzle and dazzle to Borah last year with his array of no-look passes. But this year’s team relies on Austin Bolt’s grit inside the paint and a suffocating defense.
The top defense in 5A (42.6 ppg) flexed its muscles again Friday, holding Eagle (16-9) 10 points below its season average. Tanner Hayhurst, the 5A SIC’s two-time leading scorer, still got his, finishing with 26 points and 11 rebounds. But no other Mustang finished with more than five points.
“Tanner’s a great player,” Borah coach Jeremy Dennis said. “To concentrate and think that you’re going to stop him probably is not realistic. The key is to hold those other guys more in check.”
Borah took control after a back-and-forth first half with a 9-0 run in the third quarter, building a lead it never surrendered. Eagle cut the lead to two points with 2:54 left. The Lions would normally drain the clock waiting for a layup. But instead Dewberry drilled a 15-foot pull-up jumper to stretch the lead back to two possessions.
Bolt said all the extra hours Dewberry put in honing his mid-range game paid off with that shot.
“He deserves it,” Bolt said. “He’s been practicing for that shot for his whole life. And when it came, he hit it for us.”
Eagle again cut the lead to three and two points in the final minute. But Bolt, who missed some free throws by wide margins early, drained two sets of one-and-one free throws to ice the game.
Dennis said he tried to joke with Bolt after his earlier misses, calling him Shaq as he toed the line. But with the game on the line, he challenged his ever-competitive senior and future Boise State tight end.
“How do you challenge him? Tell him he can’t do something,” Dennis said. “And it’ll work.”
Bolt stuffed the stat sheet again, finishing with 18 points, seven rebounds, four steals and two assists. Zach Garey scored 11 points, Luke Hoetker added nine and Dewberry had eight.
POST FALLS 73, ROCKY MOUNTAIN 66
Call them giant slayers. Call them overlooked. But don’t call them underdogs.
For the second year in a row, the Trojans knocked off No. 1-ranked and heavily favored Rocky Mountain at the 5A state tournament. And this year’s victory came as an even larger surprise as Rocky Mountain looked all but unbeatable this season.
But Post Falls (22-3) proved the Grizzlies (24-2) mortal.
“It does not bother me, our guys or our program when people doubt us,” Post Falls coach Mike McLean said. “You doubt us, so be it. If you think we’re the underdog and we’re about to take a licking, I don’t think that’s where you want to put us.”
Post Falls contained Rocky Mountain’s high-flying offense, slowing the pace and keeping the state’s top-scoring unit out of transition after it racked up 81 points in the opening round.
The Trojans put on their own offensive clinic, shooting 72% (23-of-32) from the floor, including 79% (11-of-14) in the second half. Four-year starter Colby Gennett and junior wing Alex Horning led the way, both pouring in 20 points. And junior point guard Cole Rutherford crossed over Grizzlies defenders over and over again on his way to 17 points and four assists.
“Everyone thought that we were supposed to get killed tonight because of our first game when we didn’t play our best,” said Gennett, the only senior on the roster who played Friday. “But it was a chip on our shoulder hearing all the social media and everything.”
Post Falls built a 20-point lead early in the fourth quarter and looked like it might embarrass the Grizzlies. It needed every one of those points, though, in a wild fourth quarter that took 43 minutes to complete and featured 11 Post Falls turnovers, two Rocky Mountain technical fouls and a Rocky Mountain fan escorted from the arena.
The Grizzlies cut the lead to five twice in the final 20 seconds. But they couldn’t get any closer as the Trojans sank 11-of-12 free throws in the last 2 minutes.
Rocky Mountain entered the state tournament as one of the most dominant 5A teams in recent memory. It had won 21 straight games, went 22-0 against Idaho teams and was the state’s No. 1 team for eight straight weeks.
The Grizzlies’ only loss prior to Friday came in double overtime to Utah’s Wasatch Academy, the No. 4 team in the country in MaxPreps’ Xcellent 25. But none of that mattered as they struggled to get stops and Post Falls mounted a 31-6 run between the second, third and fourth quarters.
Rocky Mountain will face rival Eagle in the third-place game at noon Saturday at Columbia High.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 8:36 PM.
