It was a 12-hour long nightmare for District 5 boys basketball at the state tournament Saturday in the Ford Idaho Center.
Highland, Soda Springs and Rockland each lost state championship games, and the Idaho State Journal’s sports section was six pages of sadness, tears and despair on Sunday. The Cardinals and Bulldogs couldn’t find their shooting touch, and the Rams, even after Stefan Gonzalez and Connor Harding combined to score 58 points, lost in overtime to Post Falls.
But one day and three games doesn’t overshadow a brilliant basketball season. Nobody had it better than southeast Idaho this winter. Whether it was Montpelier, Arimo or Preston, District 5 had an amazing few months.
This isn’t anything new, though. No place in Idaho has a high school sports scene quite like what we have here. This is as good as it gets.
With so much going on, this weekly column is a space to take a look back at the past week and glance forward to what’s coming up. I won’t mention everything, but I will hit on a number of subjects and topics.
LOOKING BACK
Highland and Century traveled west with intention to win state tournaments. Both came up short but, man, where they fun to watch.
Senior Stefan Gonzalez averaged 23.7 points, 5.3 assists and 5.3 rebounds a game. Junior Connor Harding averaged a double-double (16.7 points, 10.7 boards), and senior Malek Harwell shot 53.7 percent while putting up 22.3 points, 8.3 rebounds and 5.0 assists a game.
Those numbers are nuts. Each of those guys delivered in big-time fashion against the state’s best teams. It’s hard not to imagine what would have been for the Diamondbacks if they could have pulled out a victory against Twin Falls in the first round (instead of losing 68-65 in overtime).
The Diamondbacks and first-year coach Lester Stewart recovered and whipped Middleton (68-50) and Burley (63-49) in back-to-back games to take home the consolation bracket.
LOOKING FORWARD
Despite losing six of their last eight games, the Idaho State women battled their way into the Big Sky Conference tournament for the 12th consecutive year.
As a reward, the eighth-seeded Bengals will play the host team and top-seeded Montana Grizzlies at 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
From a win-loss perspective, the ISU women have taken a few steps back from the 2012 championship squad. Attendance was down this season, and the Bengals were uncharacteristically middle of the road defensively.
But, folks, trust me on this: The Bengals’ future is hitched to players like junior Apiphany Woods and freshmen Grace Kenyon and Megan Hochstein. Idaho State will jump right up into the upper half of the league standings next year. You heard it here first.
AN APOLOGY TO MAKE
I screwed up a couple weeks back and have to apologize. I wrote that Tucker Leavitt was Highland’s fourth wrestler in the school’s history to finish a season undefeated after he won the 170-pound 5A state championship Feb. 28 at Holt Arena.
I was dead wrong. Leavitt was the fifth. I mentioned Kim Pieper, Jesse Smith and Travis Bell, and left out Craig Van Sickle. Back in 1995, Van Sickle went 33-0 on the way to the title in 160 pounds. Apologies to Craig and the Van Sickle family.
By the way, just how good is Leavitt? In the past two seasons, he’s gone 84-2 and won titles at 160 and 170 pounds. It’s great for Highland that he’s a junior and has one more year left, but the rest of Idaho is devastated.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Our team is very mentally tough. We didn’t let it bother us. We got over it. We knew that we wanted to get something out of this. We didn’t want to go home (Friday).” — Century senior Leo Behrend after the Diamondbacks beat Burley on Saturday for the consolation trophy.
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