THE FRONT ROW WITH JASON ELLIOTT: The shots, shoes and seeds of state
Yeah, we know there’s some traditions when it comes to a state tournament.
Teams have them, as do some of the players.
AS THE Lake City Timberwolves took the floor for Thursday’s state 5A basketball tournament opener, the team wore similar shoes on the day.
The shoes weren’t hard to miss, with multiple colors.
“A couple of us got some team shoes earlier in the season,” Lake City sophomore guard Sophia Zufelt said. “And some of the other girls really liked them and got them too. We’d talked about doing it, but never really followed through with doing it during the regular season.”
For those basketball fanatics, it wasn’t a tribute to the all-black shoes the Chicago Bulls wore during their playoff runs in the 1990s, but just something the Timberwolves wanted to do.
“We’ve had them pretty much the entire season,” Zufelt said. “There’s not much of a meaning behind it. We just thought it would be cool since our guys' team has matching shoes as well.”
Whatever a team needs to do to come together, right?
WHEN IT comes to memories of the Ford Idaho Center, Post Falls senior guard Lexi Heath will have plenty to tell.
As a sophomore, Heath scored 16 points, making 4 of 5 3-pointers in a 69-53 win over Rigby in 2020. Heath missed her freshman and junior year with a torn ACL in her left knee.
“It brought back a lot of flashbacks to that game walking in here,” Heath said. “That game against Rigby was a fun game.”
Post Falls made 8 of 11 from the 3-point line on that day.
On Thursday, Heath was 5 of 10 shooting — including 3 of 6 from deep — with a team-high 13 points for Post Falls against Boise.
“I just wanted to try to do it again and bring some of those memories back,” Heath said. “This is my last few games, so I’ve really just got to put it all out there on the court. I really can’t hold anything back now and have to keep doing my best.”
THIS IS the first year of the Idaho High School Activities Association using MaxPreps rankings to seed the state tournaments. In the 5A tournament, fourth-seeded Post Falls and third-seeded Thunder Ridge were beaten on the first day. But those seeds could have looked a lot different had the schedule played out as it was intended.
“We were supposed to play Lake City and Coeur d’Alene earlier this year,” Boise coach Kim Brydges said. “We’ve been doing some trade games with those two, and this year we were supposed to go to them.”
But the COVID pandemic had other ideas in November, when the Brave were scheduled to travel to Coeur d’Alene.
“Our district had a rule in place with no overnight stays,” Brydges said. “So we kind of had to scramble to find games. Fortunately Lewiston was able to come down and play us, which was fantastic, but also why we’re a game short because we couldn’t get another opponent to come down and play us.”
Post Falls (21.90 rating) finished ahead of Boise (21.88) in the final regular season ratings, giving the Trojans a higher seed.
“It’s a bummer because it made a bit of a difference rating wise because we didn’t get to play some of those teams out of state,” Brydges said. “And that really could have helped us a bit.”
Jason Elliott is a sports writer for The Press. He can be reached by telephone at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JECdAPress.
