THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: After St. Maries hit a shot like that ...

The video went viral.

The inbound pass from midcourt with .6 seconds left to a suddenly wide-open Colby Renner, some 30 feet away at the top of the key. The St. Maries High junior had time to catch the ball, turn to his left and let fly just before the buzzer sounded.

Renner's unlikely 3-pointer, in the semifinals at Eagle High, beat two-time defending champion North Fremont and sent the Lumberjacks to the state 2A title game late the next morning.

There, some 19 hours later, St. Maries won its first state championship since 1960, beating Ambrose of Meridian at the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa.

Destiny?

"There’s something there," said St. Maries junior Tristan Gentry, who hit the go-ahead free throws with less than a minute left in the title game. "If you hit that with a guy, no offense to him, that was supposed to be our fifth option, that’s just crazy."

St. Maries coach Bryan Chase agreed with the destiny angle.

"That’s what I told 'em (after the semifinal)," Chase said. "We got done, and we were in the locker room, and you feel like it’s just destiny. This group never gives up, and somehow finds a way to win under extreme circumstances."

ANOTHER VIDEO had a different angle.

After Renner hit the game-winner, the camera panned to a dog pile forming in front of the St. Maries bench.

Chase was at the edge of the dog pile, nearest the bench. He attempted to join the pile.

Except ...

"I got knocked down, into the scorer’s table," Chase said. "We knocked the plastic out of there for a second. Of course the kids were dog piling, and I kept trying to get up and I kept getting knocked back down. Everyone was asking if I was all right."

Of course he was all right. Adrenaline will do that.

It was the first state title for any of the players, but the second for Chase, who coached Lakeside to a state A-4 title in softball in 1997.

"This is definitely the biggest accomplishment. My next-door neighbor was on the 1960 team, and we visit quite a bit."

That neighbor, Ed Haskins, starred on the Lumberjacks' title team 61 years ago, then went on to play at Idaho.

"It'll be pretty cool to go home and talk to those guys that were on that team," Renner said.

"Pretty special, this group of seniors, been through a lot of third-place trophies, second-place trophies," Chase said. "Somehow we just find a way to win these last two nights."

"It feels overdue," said senior guard Eli Gibson, who played in the state title game two years ago, when St. Maries lost in overtime to North Fremont. "We’ve been so close so many times, and it’s just amazing. A lot of us have been playing together since third, fourth grade, and to finally see it all come together … because the first couple years we didn’t win any games; we were terrible, and then it finally started to click around seventh, eighth grade."

Gibson said Chase, who has guided St. Maries to state in each of his seven seasons as coach, has meant "everything" to the success of the Lumberjacks program.

"He does a lot for us," Gibson said. "He kinda works around our schedule, because a lot of us have jobs. He’s pretty flexible. He just tells us to get better every day; there’s no going back. Final goal is right here.

"We don’t really talk about state until we get here. And I think doing that helped us a lot. We take it one game at a time."

St. Maries (22-1) lost just once all season, and battled from behind in its two most important games of the season, and the reward was a state title.

"We put really tough games on our schedule," Gibson said, "and if you watch other teams, they kinda peter out at the end of the game, and don’t know how to close games."

RENNER AND Blake Buchanan, a sophomore at Lake City, are cousins. After Renner won his state title, he said he was coming back later that night to watch Buchanan, whose Timberwolves were playing for the state 5A title.

Blake's mom, the former Debbie Martin, starred at St. Maries in the 1980s, and is now the volleyball coach at Idaho.

"I play with him at the park (in St. Maries) sometimes," said Renner, whose mom Sara Martin also was a standout at St. Maries. "I go down to Moscow and play down there when he used to live down there (before transferring to Lake City this past summer).

"I’ve been talking to him the whole time down here, said 'I’ll see you here (at the Idaho Center). I just thought our team had a good chance of making it here, and we did."

Colby's brother, Tyler, was a sophomore "floater" for the Lumberjacks. Their cousin, Wyatt Holmes, is a freshman who was called up for the trip to state. Wyatt's mom is Janel (Martin) Holmes, sister of Debbie and Sara.

Colby said he and Blake are "the two cousins that are with each other at every family gathering. Best friends, always hanging out. We just have that connection.

"They come up to my grandma’s, and we go boating in the summer, hang out on the river in St. Maries."

And when the burly 6-foot-2 Renner and the slender 6-9 Buchanan play one-on-one ...

"He definitely kicks my butt. He swats the crap out of me every time," Renner said.

Even with your muscle?

"Yeah, he’s just way taller than me," Renner said.

Hours later, Buchanan played well for the third straight day, but Lake City fell to Meridian in the title game.

"I’m close with him; he’s one of my favorite cousins," Buchanan said, after his game, of Renner. "But yeah, congrats to him, he hit that game-winning shot in the semis, and to bring back that hardware to St. Maries, that was awesome.

Relaxing at the hotel earlier Saturday, Buchanan watched on the internet as his cousin won a state title.

"It was awesome seeing him rush the court, and all of them enjoying it from St. Maries … that’s all my family," Buchanan said. "It was awesome for them to win."

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