Owyhee’s star struggled. It didn’t matter. How the Storm made the 5A state finals anyway
An off night from a star player sinks most teams’ state championship dreams.
Not Owyhee’s.
USC signee Liam Campbell finished just 2-for-11 from the field Friday. But Campbell’s struggles hardly mattered as the Storm rolled to a 63-51 win over Madison in the 5A state semifinals at the Ford Idaho Center.
The victory sent the third-year program to the finals for the second time. No. 1 Owyhee (23-3) will face No. 3 Timberline (22-4) at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Idaho Center.
“We really relied on Liam last year to carry us, and it got us in the end,” Owyhee coach Andy Harrington said. “So we worked really hard this offseason on figuring out how to get everyone involved and find balance.
“That was the staple win for us to be like, ‘Liam was (2-for-11) with seven points,’ and we won by 12 against a really high-level team.”
[Related: State basketball tournament scores, brackets]
The Storm’s loaded roster more than picked up the slack for Campbell, the team’s only senior. Junior forward Jackson Rasmussen racked up 19 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks while shooting 8-for-12 from the floor. And fellow junior Boden Howell poured in 15 points and was 5-for-7 shooting, including a 3-for-4 performance behind the 3-point line.
Howell kick-started a decisive 14-2 run to start the third quarter. He hit a pair of 3-pointers and rifled an assist to a wide-open Jackson Rogers under the basket when Madison scrambled as he spotted up for a corner 3.
The 6-4 guard joined the team this season from South Medford, Oregon, where he broke Kyle Singler’s single-game scoring record with 56 points. He quickly realized he had to give up shots in Owyhee’s rotation, but he said that’s no problem with three returning All-Idaho players around him.
“He’s such an offensive threat for us,” Rasmussen said. “I don’t think there’s anyone that can guard him. The midrange, the pull-up or even getting to the rim, he brings a lot of offensive firepower to our team.”
Rasmussen continued his breakout tournament, asserting his will in the paint on both ends with his 6-7 frame and strength. He also delivered the dagger in the third quarter, when he sank back-to-back 3-pointers to stretch Owyhee’s lead to 16 points.
No. 4 Madison (23-3) never got closer than nine points the rest of the way.
“I get to watch him every day. I get to play against him every day. But it’s not something that I, or anyone on this team, should take for granted,” Howell said. “... When everything kind of slows down and we don’t have anything going on, we know we can always hit Ras and that’s pretty much an automatic bucket.”
Three Madison players finished in double figures. Junior point guard Nash Humpherys led the charge with 16 points, Berrett Wilson added 15 and Luke Watson finished with 14. But the Bobcats could never claw out of their third-quarter deficit.
“I felt like my guys did everything perfect, exactly how we wanted to do it,” Madison coach Shane Humpherys said. “And it got away from us in three minutes. We couldn’t recover.”
The Storm have carried sky-high expectations since the school opened three years ago, magnifying any single loss. Harrington admitted he dwelled on last year’s first-round upset as defending state champion until Campbell and Rasmussen pulled him aside at a tournament last summer and told him to drop it.
He did, and the result has been a 20-0 record against Idaho teams and another shot at a title.
“The journey started then,” Harrington said. “... I stopped. I still remember that. But that was a defining moment for our team and our program.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2024 at 8:52 PM.
