Three Boise-area basketball teams advance to 6A state semifinals. Here’s how they did it
One major upset, one late rally and a 3-point shooting clinic highlighted the first round of the 6A boys basketball state tournament Thursday at the Ford Idaho Center.
Boise, Owyhee and Timberline all advanced to the final four from the Treasure Valley. Lake City of North Idaho will join them.
6A SEMIFINAL MATCHUPS
The 6A tournament hosts its semifinals early Friday at the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa. The matchups are:
- No. 6 Boise (12-14) vs. No. 2 Lake City (20-4), 12 p.m.
- No. 1 Owyhee (21-4) vs. No. 4 Timberline (15-10), 2 p.m.
IDAHO 6A BOYS BASKETBALL STATE TOURNAMENT
BOISE 49, MADISON 46: Boise opened the tournament with a shocker. But given the Brave’s postseason run, maybe it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.
Sixth-seeded Boise knocked off heavily favored Madison in the first round of the state tournament, extending the Brave’s Cinderella run into the semifinals.
Not bad for a team that has yet to climb over .500 on the season and needed to win a play-in game just to qualify for its own district tournament.
“We’ve heard people say we don’t deserve it,” Boise junior guard Luke Soltau said. “Everybody in the district tournament was saying how easy of a (path we had) to get to state. but we know we belong here.”
[Related: 6A to 1A state tournament scoreboard | Title predictions | Scouting reports on all 48 teams]
Third-seeded Madison (21-3) entered the tournament expected to contend for a state title. Two-time all-state point guard Nash Humpherys signed with Boise State in November, and the Bobcats spent most of the season ranked second in the state media poll.
But Boise clogged the paint and swatted shot after shot, pushing Madison out to the 3-point line. And the Bobcats never found their stroke, finishing 3-for-27 behind the arc, including 0-for-15 in the second half.
Humpherys still scored a game-high 25 points, but he needed 26 shots to do it, making just seven field goals.
“They packed it in on Nash, and he wasn’t Nash tonight,” said Madison coach Shane Humpherys, Nash’s father. “And that’s OK. He’s not always going to be Superman. That just came at a bad time.”
Boise coach Manny Varela said teams spent all season worried about how to stop the Division I guard. Instead, he assigned junior Eli Rich to Humpherys and focused the rest of Boise’s resources on everyone else.
The plan held Madison to a season-low 46 points, 20 below its season average. Carter Lerwil added 13 points for the Bobcats, but the rest of the team contributed just eight points.
“Nash is arguably one of the, if not the, best offensive players in the state,” Varela said. “But we think we have one of the best defensive players in the state in Eli.”
Boise took control of the game in the second quarter, sinking 4-of-6 3-pointers to take a lead it would never surrender. Will Gebert (19 points, nine rebounds), Isaac Thacker (13 points), Michael Nance and Soltau all connected as Boise built a six-point halftime lead.
Long-range shooting vexed Boise most of the year. The Brave finished the regular season as the worst-shooting team from 3 in the 6A SIC at 25%, yet still jacked up plenty per game. Varela said he even forbade his team from shooting any 3’s in a late January loss to Rocky Mountain, trying to convince the Brave to look inside the 3-point line for shots.
The message finally sunk in, fueling Boise’s late-season run. It entered the district tournament seeded ninth out of 12 teams. But four wins in five games puts Boise one game away from its first trip to the finals since 1991.
Boise knows all the numbers. But it rejects the underdog label, asserting it belongs with the state’s best teams.
“We don’t care about our record,” Varela said. “If you judge every team by their record, they should have won, right? So, then why play the game? Why play the tournament? We should just give the trophy to Owyhee and then just not even play.
“ … We’ve got heart. We’ve got grit. We’ve got determination. And that will trump whatever else the other teams have. … We’re not afraid.”
LAKE CITY 63, THUNDER RIDGE 48: The second-seeded Timberwolves didn’t entertain any thoughts of an upset, leading the entire game and closing the first quarter on a 14-0 run to cruise to a first-round victory.
Four Lake City players finished in double figures as the Timberwolves shot 26-for-57 (46%) from the floor. Jordan Carlson posted a double-double of 17 points and 10 rebounds. Cason Miller added 16 points, Joshua Watson contributed 15 and Reese Strawn chipped in 10.
McKay Scoresby scored a team-high 17 points for Thunder Ridge (13-12), which drops into the consolation bracket and faces conference rival Madison in an elimination game at 5 p.m. Friday at Rocky Mountain.
OWYHEE 49, BORAH 40: Borah held a five-point lead with 5:15 left, threatening the second stunning upset of Thursday’s opening round. But the top-ranked Storm ended the game with a 14-0 run to escape with a victory.
“There are super-high expectations around our team and program. And when we don’t win by 25 points, it’s a loss,” Owyhee coach Andy Harrington said. “But that was a hell of a game, and that’s a win for us. So, survive and advance.”
Owyhee crushed Borah by 24 points in their only other meeting Feb. 7, one of a litany of Storm blowouts this season. But the Lions controlled the pace Thursday and held the normally high-flying Storm to 16-for-44 (36%) shooting to put Owyhee on upset alert.
Borah (11-14) took a two-point lead into the fourth quarter and extended it to five points with Yohanes Mina’s 5-foot jumper with 5:15 left. But the Lions didn’t score again as Owyhee rose off the mat.
Jayce Allen provided Owyhee the spark it needed. The senior guard picked Hendrix Castro’s pocket at midcourt and threw down a two-handed dunk, giving Owyhee the lead back at 41-40 with 4:21 left. The Storm finished strong en route to their 40th straight win over an Idaho team.
“Jayce Allen is a guy that we’ve been challenging to be really aggressive all year,” Harrington said. “And I thought he rose to the moment there in that fourth quarter a few times.”
Owyhee senior guard Jackson Rogers said many teams would panic down by five. But he said the Storm relied on their veteran lineup, which returned five players from last year’s state championship, to ride out Thursday’s hairy ending.
“It just shows the maturity we have as a team,” Rogers said. “I feel like the difference between us and Borah is we’ve been there before. We’ve got a lot of guys who have experienced it multiple years now, and we’ve finished it all the way.
“We know what we’re capable of. So when we get in those positions, we know we can just stay calm and figure out a way. And today, we did.”
Junior point guard Logan Haustveit led Owyhee with 12 points and eight rebounds. Allen added 11 points, while Rogers and Boden Howell finished with 10 each. Howell, a Rice signee, struggled from the field (3-for-12) but scored eight of his 10 points in the fourth quarter, including a two-handed dunk of his own.
Borah senior forward Dylan Luekenga topped the Lions with 13 points and nine rebounds, and Castro added 13 points and four assists. The loss sent Borah into the consolation bracket, where it will face Meridian at 7 p.m. Friday at Rocky Mountain.
The Lions entered the season as the ultimate underdog, picked to finish last in the 6A SIC for the second straight year. A five-game losing streak to end the regular season saddled the Lions with the No. 11 seed in the district tournament, but Borah shocked the league by qualifying for state — and nearly shocked all of Idaho before falling cold in the fourth quarter.
“We’re not here to fold or give in,” Luekenga said. “We’re still here fighting for a trophy. It might not be his first place, but it still matters to us.”
TIMBERLINE 60, MERIDIAN 53: Collin Morris found his rhythm Thursday. And once he found it, Meridian couldn’t stop him.
The 6-foot-6 sophomore hit all four 3-pointers he attempted in the second quarter, and he went 5-for-5 behind the arc to score all 15 of his points in the first half. Morris made the shots from five different locations, putting on a shooting clinic to build Timberline an eight-point lead at halftime that it would never surrender.
“That’s just who he is,” Timberline senior Alex Ko said. “If he gets going, he ain’t gonna stop.”
Morris wasn’t alone, though. Timberline finished the night 11-for-23 (48%) behind the arc to avenge a pair of losses to Meridian earlier this season.
Kole Hudson drained three long-range shots for all nine of his points. Big man Jacob Heyne (13 points) went 2-for-2 behind the arc. And Ko (15 points) added a 3-pointer as Timberline teed off and led by as many as 17 points in the third quarter.
“Alex can get hot. Kole can get hot. Jacob Heyne can get hot. That’s kind of who we are,” Timberline coach Travis Noble said. “We don’t want to live and die by it. But these guys can shoot it, so we have to let them do that for us.”
Coach Jeff Sanor called a timeout for Meridian (15-10) midway through the second quarter, trying to stop the bleeding. But Timberline kept raining 3’s to mount a 15-2 run and put the game out of reach.
“They’re really good about getting their shooters open,” Sanor said. “They set really good screens to get those guys open looks. And their shooters really knew where the ball was coming from.”
Meridian whittled the lead to three when TJ Sanor hit a corner 3 with 1:29 left in the fourth quarter. The Warriors didn’t score again.
Tristan Fortin and Drake Hope each scored 17 to lead the Warriors, who fell into the consolation bracket and will face Borah at 7 p.m. Friday at Rocky Mountain.
“I believe my guys have enough competitive fight in them to show up and play just like we won tonight,” Jeff Sanor said. “So that’s what I’m expecting them to do, and that’s what I expect to see.”
This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 3:44 PM.
