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STATE 2A BOYS BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT: Colby's clutch moment

| March 6, 2021 1:22 AM

EAGLE — Junior post Colby Renner has been trying to prove his range to St. Maries coach Bryan Chase all season.

“He loves to shoot at practice,” Chase said. “I keep telling him that if he can make 2 of 5, then he can do it in a game.”

Friday night, all Renner had to do was be 1 for 1.

Renner hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer, from some 30 feet out at the top of the key, to send the Lumberjacks past the North Fremont Huskies 45-43 in the state 2A semifinals.

St. Maries (22-1), which finished runner-up to North Fremont (21-1) of Ashton in 2019, will bid for its first state title since 1960 today against Ambrose (21-2) of Meridian at the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa at 10:30 a.m. PST. Ambrose rolled past Wendell (17-8) 77-35 in the other semifinal.

“We were going to run a screen for Eli (Gibson) and they knew we were going to get it to him,” Renner said in a postgame interview on IdahoSports.com. “I knew that if the ball came to me, I had to shoot. At first, Coleman (Ross, who inbounded the ball) was thinking, ‘Why did I pass it to you?’ The next thing I knew I was getting tackled into the scorers table.”

North Fremont took a 43-42 lead with 1.6 seconds left on a free throw by Jordan Lenz. St. Maries called timeout, then inbounded the ball and advanced to midcourt, with Gibson calling another timeout with .6 seconds remaining.

“I told our guys that we were still in this,” Chase said. “Deep down, you kind of second-guess it, but there’s just something about this group. We were trying to get Eli a little deeper and get a good look at the 3-point line. He was smart enough to call a timeout in the air.”

And as for Renner ...

“To be honest, he’s the fourth option there,” Chase said. “But I asked the kids who wanted it, Colby got a great look and just drained it.”

"I was a floater when we played them in the title game," Renner said of two years ago. "All we've talked about since then is coming back and showing them how good we are up north."

North Fremont led 28-20 at halftime and held the lead in the second half until Randie Becktel converted a pair of free throws with 4:10 remaining.

“We knew we had to keep fighting and that got the kids going at halftime,” Chase said. “We’d talked about being down 10 to them in the title game in 2019, kept the pressure on them and knew we could still do this."

Gibson had 16 points, Becktel seven points for St. Maries.

AJ Hill scored 11 points, Lenz and Luke Hill 10 points each for North Fremont (21-1), which had its 29-game win streak snapped.

St. Maries 11 9 13 12 — 45

North Fremont 12 16 6 9 — 43

ST. MARIES — Ross 6, Becktel 7, Gentry 6, Stancil 5, Gibson 16, Sands 0, C. Renner 5. Totals 17-45 6-9 45.

NORTH FREMONT — Lenz 10, L. Hill 10, Palmer 9, A. Hill 11, Childs 3, Richardson 0. Totals 14-32 9-15 43.