Prediction: These 10 Treasure Valley teams will advance to the state football semifinals
What a week for Treasure Valley high school football.
Teams from the Boise region dominated the first round of the state playoffs, sending the maximum amount of 11-man teams to the quarterfinals.
Here’s how each league fared in the first round:
▪ 5A SIC: 3-1
▪ 4A SIC: 5-0 (again)
▪ 3A SRV: 2-0
▪ 2A WIC: 4-1
The only losses came as local squads battled other Boise-area teams, ensuring someone had to go home. And only Salmon River’s loss to Kendrick in 1A Division II kept the region from sweeping the first round at all levels.
A repeat performance is too much to ask for. But here’s who will move on to the next round at the 5A and 4A levels, and how they’ll do it.
TIMBERLINE AT ROCKY MOUNTAIN, 7 P.M.
On paper, Rocky Mountain (9-0) should roll into the 5A state semifinals.
The Grizzlies enter as the unanimous No. 1 team in the state. They’ve won 21 straight games. They field 5A’s top defense (10.8 points per game) and No. 2 offense (39.7 ppg). And they’ve won eight in a row against Timberline, including a 21-0 victory against the Wolves five weeks ago.
But they don’t play games on paper. And Timberline (6-4) enters Friday with two of the most dangerous traits a team can have: confidence and nothing to lose.
After a 0-9 season last year, Timberline used a series of comebacks to charge back into the playoffs, then rallied again for the first playoff win in program history after an 8-hour bus trip to Post Falls.
That bus trip normally spells doom for SIC teams, but Timberline overcame that obstacle, too, to continue its record-setting season.
“It’s kind of a pinch-me situation, and you just say, Hey, ‘We’ve got nothing to lose at this point,’ ” Timberline coach Ian Smart said. “Just go out there and have fun. We’re all human.
“At the end of the day, everybody’s got a chance. So you might as well have fun and enjoy it, soak the whole thing up. Because opportunities like this don’t come all the time.”
Timberline gave Rocky Mountain all it could handle five weeks ago. The Grizzlies scored on their opening possession, then returned an interception to the 2-yard line to take a 14-0 lead less than 3 minutes into the first quarter.
Rocky Mountain outscored Timberline only 7-0 the rest of the way, becoming the first of five consecutive teams the Wolves have shut out in the second half.
“We take them seriously,” Rocky Mountain coach Chris Culig said. “Definitely as a defense, we know they have some good players. We have a lot of experience from the playoffs last year, so they know what’s at stake.”
Timberline has a narrow path to the upset. The Wolves will have to get creative on offense while protecting the ball against a defense that creates turnovers in bunches. The Wolves committed three turnovers last time against Rocky Mountain.
An upset wouldn’t shock me. Timberline has rallied from seemingly impossible odds all season. But a lot has to break right for the Wolves to keep advancing.
Rocky Mountain 28, Timberline 15
HIGHLAND VS. BORAH AT DONA LARSEN PARK, 7 P.M.
Programs with opposite pedigrees meet in this 5A quarterfinal.
Highland (7-3) has reached the state semifinals 20 times in the past 24 years. Meanwhile, Borah hasn’t reached the semifinals in 24 years.
But it’s the No. 3-ranked Lions (7-2) who enter as the favorite and only ranked team.
Riding a six-game winning streak and with the state’s top player, Austin Bolt, terrorizing opponents week after week, the Lions stand as the state’s hottest and most dangerous team.
“These last six weeks, they have the confidence they can play with anyone,” Borah coach Jason Burton said. “Beating Mountain View, that was an extreme confidence boost. That was a notice of, ‘OK, we can go play with anyone.’ ” Anyone includes Highland, one of the state’s blue bloods.
Settle in for an old-fashioned slugfest as two of the state’s top rushing offenses square off. Kalem Demuzio leads the Highland attack, ranking second in 5A with 1,176 rushing yards and 10 TDs.
But Bolt (1,338 yards, 26 TDs) is the state’s leading rusher and a one-man wrecking crew. He’s not going home anytime soon.
Borah 35, Highland 20
MOUNTAIN VIEW AT COEUR D’ALENE, 8 P.M. MT
Timberline ventured north last week and picked up the first playoff win for the SIC in North Idaho under the 5A classification’s 6-year-old playoff structure. Now it’s Mountain’s View’s turn to make the nearly 500-mile bus trip, and the fourth-ranked Mavericks (8-2) venture into one of the state’s largest home-field advantages.
No Treasure Valley team has won on Coeur d’Alene’s home field since Eagle in the 2009 semifinals. And since then, the second-ranked Vikings are 43-7 at home, including 9-1 in the playoffs.
Mountain View coach Judd Benedick said Coeur d’Alene’s defense reminds him a lot of Rocky Mountain’s. The Vikings bring pressure from all angles all night. But they play mostly man coverage in the secondary, creating one-on-one opportunities for Mountain View’s dangerous receiving corps of Colby Peugh, Kayden Chan and K.J. Lynch.
“The strength of our offense is our receivers,” Benedick said. “So you’d hope we’d get some good matchups and protect well enough where you can capitalize and take some shots.”
The state’s top offense (40.0 points per game) needs to capitalize on just a few of those shots to hang crooked numbers on the scoreboard. But Coeur d’Alene can hang with anyone in a shootout.
Quarterback Jack Prka completes 73 percent of his passes and ranks second in 5A with 2,854 yards and 25 TDs. He has a host of receivers to rely on, making an upset on the Vikings’ home field a tall task.
Coeur d’Alene 42, Mountain View 38
EAGLE AT RIGBY, 7 P.M.
The Mustangs (7-3) are rolling after sophomore quarterback Mason McHugh tied the school’s single-game record for touchdown passes (six) and total TDs (seven) in last week’s 52-32 win over Capital.
Eagle has found a spark with its sophomore quarterback, building an explosive offense around him and receivers Dalton Mashore and Cam Churchill. But a stout Rigby (7-1) defense — second in the state at 14.5 points per game — won’t give McHugh broken coverage after broken coverage to exploit.
Rigby 28, Eagle 21
NAMPA AT BISHOP KELLY, 7 P.M.
A rematch from Week 1 of the regular season doesn’t provide much insight. Yes, Nampa routed Bishop Kelly 40-20 on the Knights’ home field. But both teams have changed and grown since then, so that result isn’t much of a predictor.
Donavon Estrada, on the other hand, is a whole other story.
BK couldn’t contain Nampa’s senior quarterback way back in Week 1. And he’s only proved more elusive since then.
The 6-foot, 175-pound signal caller torched the Century defense in a first-round win last week, putting up numbers seen in video games. Estrada racked up 538 total yards and seven TDs, including 397 on the ground and a game-winning 71-yard TD run with 28 seconds left.
“We always knew he was that dynamic and had that kind of potential,” Nampa coach Dan Holtry said. “But it was just awesome to see.
“... You design stuff and put together a progression. But he just takes things to the next level.”
Even a fraction of last week’s performance will carry Nampa back into the semifinals.
Nampa 38, Bishop Kelly 20
VALLIVUE AT KUNA, 7 P.M.
Strap in for another rematch as No. 3 Vallivue (8-2) tries to end No. 1 Kuna’s (10-0) perfect season.
The 4A classification’s top two offenses did not disappoint last time around, when Kuna scored a 34-28 victory in Caldwell. Vallivue and its vaunted rushing attack (398 yards per game) still racked up 303 yards on the ground, and Falcons quarterback Lan Larison busted a couple of long, weaving touchdown runs.
But Kuna snatched an early lead, kept Vallivue from playing keepaway with the ball and held Larison relatively in check (179 rushing yards), a trio of feats the Kavemen will need to repeat to advance to their first 4A semifinal.
Kuna coach Sherm Blaser said his team has focused all week on making Larison and Carson Child (4A’s fourth-leading rusher) make their first cut in the backfield, preventing them from getting up to full speed and giving the defense time to rally to the ball.
“We are not going to be able to limit their touches,” Blaser said. “But we’ve got to limit the damage they can do and the long runs, especially Larison. From everything we’ve watched on film, they’ll hit you for 3, 4 yards at a time, then — boom, go for 60.”
Kuna gets reinforcements for the rematch. The Kavemen beat Vallivue without two of their three starting defensive linemen five weeks ago. With that unit fully healthy, Kuna stands in better position to advance to its first semifinal since 1998.
Kuna 35, Vallivue 30
JEROME AT MIDDLETON, 7 P.M.
I wrote last week that Middleton (7-3) had the easiest path to the semifinals. Moscow gave the Vikings a scare last week as Middleton needed a Jerry Kiser 90-yard pick-six in the fourth quarter to seal a 13-3 victory.
But with the Vikings and Air Raid quarterback Dallas Hagler returning home, I can’t see that offense staying bottled up for a second week in a row.
Middleton 38, Jerome 15
This story was originally published November 7, 2019 at 3:59 PM.
