THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Post Falls’ boys, and the gun show

The road that leads the media toward the back entrance of the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa also runs by a much smaller, also indoor, facility which plays host to indoor track meets, among other events.

A couple of Saturdays ago, when the state high school boys basketball championship games were being played in the big arena, the smaller building was the site of a gun show.

As it turned out, the Post Falls boys could have used some more “guns,” as the Trojans were outmuscled by Austin Bolt and the Borah Lions of Boise in the state 5A title game later that night.

“The weight room is going to be a big adjustment to how we’re going to do, how we’re going turn out next year,” Post Falls junior forward Alex Horning said that night, after the title game. “We’ll come out stronger next year. We’ll have this feeling of how we just lost, and watching them out cheering. We’ll take that, and we’ll come out stronger next year.”

POST FALLS is a highly skilled basketball team, a joy to watch in a free-flowing game.

But sometimes at state, it gets a little more physical — OK, sometimes a LOT more physical — especially against the Boise-area schools.

Rocky Mountain of Meridian looks like a small-college team, with its size, and is imposing when it decides to pressure the other team.

Post Falls has managed to beat Rocky each of the last two seasons — an impressive feat in itself, and something most other Boise-area schools have been unable to do.

But the Trojans, after building a 20-point lead, had to weather seven minutes of full-court pressure from Rocky in the semifinals Friday night. The Grizzlies forced 11 Post Falls turnovers in the quarter, and got within five points before the Trojans held on for a 73-66 win.

The next night Bolt, who is going to Boise State to play football, was too much for any of the Trojans to handle inside, and the Lions won the state title, 65-56.

Post Falls coach Mike McLean likes to say games are learning experiences, win or lose. After the title game, he was asked what the Trojans learned from this game, this tourney.

“When we go back to school and these kids are in their weight classes, and they want to take a day off from lifting, you don’t want to put in a day in the weight room, just remember what Austin Bolt did to us,” McLean said.

Of course, when a team goes 22-4 and plays for a state title, there’s not much to nitpick about. But that’s how high the bar is at Post Falls these days. In the last 12 years, the Trojans have reached the semifinals eight times, played for the state title four times and won it twice.

And McLean, who recently completed his 13th season as coach at his alma mater, is always looking for ways to make his team better — including playing as tough a nonleague schedule as is allowed. Also ...

“ … I think all of our kids are good at two or three things — and they’re not the same things,” McLean said. “What I told ’em (in the locker room, after the state title game) is there’s way more to basketball than two or three things. I challenged every one of them, we need to work on the things that we don’t like to do, things that we’re not as skilled at. We need to work on those things, so that we become better between now and next year at the beginning of the season.”

POST FALLS will return four starters next season, and three of them — Horning, and guards Caden McLean and Cole Rutherford — will be in their third year in the starting lineup. But the Trojans will miss their lone senior starter, Colby Gennett, a four-year starter who played in the state semifinals each of his four seasons, and played in one state title game.

“I’m just going to miss his competitive spirit,” Mike McLean said. “From a fan perspective, we’re going to miss his rebounding — that high-flying, go get the tough rebound, make the tough shots going to the rim. But I can tell you this; our junior class, the growth that you’ve seen in Caden and Alex and Cole and Isaac (Ballew) this year, is because the last two years Colby and those guys have had wars in practice. Without a kid like him, our other kids don’t develop that way.

“Our program was in a pretty good spot when he came in as a freshman; he’s leaving our program in a better place — what are we, 22-4 and we’re coming out here (from the locker room) bumming like crazy. We’ve been in the state semis all these years. Sometimes the expectations we have are sky high, but he’s leaving this program in a better spot than he found it. And it wasn’t in a bad spot when he got here. He bumped it up. … and he’s just a very nice young man to be around.”

Said Gennett: “I knew I needed to be a leader for these guys, and I wanted to make them the best that they could possibly be. And I hope I did that for them.”

THE IDAHO Center was set up about as ideal as it could be for Mike McLean, who has been hobbling since suffered a dislocated right ankle and multiple fractures of his talus in a mishap on his farm on Super Bowl Sunday.

He coached at state with the aid of a knee scooter and an iWalk. He wore shorts during the games not because he was feeling casual — he couldn’t get his pants leg over the cast.

As Post Falls was the home team in all three games at state, the long hallway the teams take to their locker rooms fed almost directly to the home team’s bench. An elevator was available if necessary, and he again praised his wife, Jessica, for looking out for him, and for his assistant coaches, Rob McCarthy and Brian Carlson for handling increased responsibilities.

And Mike said he appreciated the help from his youngest son, Trenton, a seventh-grader who “was tasked with a very unique responsibility.

“During full timeouts and between quarters, when I sat down in a chair while wearing my iWalk, Trenton had to get down on a knee and hold up my iWalk peg foot so that my injured foot/ankle did not touch the ground,” Mike said. “This allowed me to hold my coaching board and use a marker and coach our guys on adjustments we have to make during a game. Not a glamourous responsibility, but Trenton did what he had to help me and this team be as successful as we could be.”

Mike used the knee scooter to roll up and down the hall. Once the games began, he coached standing up at the head of the bench, perched on his iWalk.

“It allowed me to be able to use my hands and move slowly around,” he said. “I never had a big issue wearing it; however if you don’t use one hand on the handle while you move around you can trip. I had a couple of those situations, but never fell.”

At least once during the tournament, during an intense moment during a game, McLean appeared to be rocking forward — which wouldn’t have been pretty had he gone over top of his iWalk.

“I also had to be aware of the court at the Idaho Center because there is an edge where the court stops,” he said. “Didn’t want to fall down and embarrass myself. My staff, former players and friends would never have let that go.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.