‘We threw careful out the window.’ How Meridian basketball pulled off Stinky Sneaker win
This season has gone anything but according to plan for the Meridian High boys basketball team. Slow starts and sloppy finishes left the Warriors mired in dead last in the 6A Southern Idaho Conference a third of the way through the league schedule.
But Meridian erupted for a 53-46 win over rival Mountain View in the annual Stinky Sneaker rivalry game Tuesday, showing flashes of the team picked to finish fourth in the league’s preseason poll and contend for a state tournament berth.
“I kept telling everybody that when the team I see practice shows up to some games, we’re gonna be really good,” Meridian coach Jeff Sanor said. “But for whatever reason, we’ve kind of throttled back during games, maybe get a little careful.
“I think, today, we threw careful out the window.”
The care-free attitude led to a renewed defensive effort. Meridian (7-8, 1-4 6A SIC) entered Tuesday with the 6A classification’s most porous defense at 61.7 points per game. But the Warriors held Mountain View 13 points under its season average while forcing 15 turnovers, including 11 in the first half.
That early defense made the Warriors look like anything but a last-place team, and gave Meridian time to find its legs and shooting stroke in a gym packed to its 2,750-seat capacity. But it took a key hustle play from junior Jacob Hudgins to finally swing the momentum.
Mountain View (7-7, 1-4) wing Cooper Patterson drew oohs and aahs with a highlight-reel block late in the second quarter, stuffing a Hudgins shot in the paint back into his face. But the Meridian reserve calmly collected the ball, slipped past Patterson and converted his own putback for a 21-20 lead.
Hudgins (eight points) added another tip-in as he flew out bounds 90 seconds later, and Meridian never trailed the rest of the night.
“Jacob has embraced his role, not more than anybody else, but quicker,” Jeff Sanor said. “Jacob knows what we want him to do out there, and he does it 110%. He just puts himself in wonderful positions to make plays.”
The Warriors kept rolling in the second half, starting the third quarter on a 9-2 run and sinking 13-of-23 (56%) shots after the long halftime. Meridian led by as many as 11 points in the fourth quarter before Mountain View tried to mount one last rally.
The Mavericks cut the lead to six points and grabbed three offensive rebounds after a couple of missed 3-pointers threatened to make it a one-possession game. But Meridian senior TJ Sanor corralled a long rebound in the front court and threw down a two-handed dunk with 1:27 left to drive the final nail in the coffin.
“Our struggles early on have been playing through an entire game,” said TJ Sanor, who scored a team-high 11 points. “We had Rocky (Mountain) down 10 at the start of the fourth quarter, and we just didn’t play through.
“We’ve just got to continue to play through, and I think we did that really well tonight.”
Hunter White added 10 points, and Tristan Fortin finished with eight points and nine rebounds as part of Meridian’s balanced attack.
MOUNTAIN VIEW WINS STINKY SNEAKER SPIRIT
The Warriors finished with the victory on the scoreboard. But Mountain View took home the Stinky Sneaker trophy — a beat-up Chuck Taylor — as the winner of the game’s spirit competition for the third straight year.
Former Mountain View principal Randy Fout started the spirit competition 20 years ago. He died in a car crash later that year, and the game lives on in his name.
Senior guard Teage Corrigan scored a game-high 15 points to lead the Mavericks, and Patterson fell just short of a double-double with nine points and nine rebounds.
This story was originally published January 21, 2025 at 11:18 PM.
