‘This will be the one that hurts.’ How Melba’s perfect season slipped away in state finals

History will have to wait for another day.

Bear Lake rallied in the second half to knock off Melba 55-44 in the 2A boys basketball state championship Saturday at the Ford Idaho Center, snapping the Mustangs’ 40-game winning streak and stopping their bid to become the first Idaho high school with undefeated boys and girls basketball teams in the same season.

“This is the game that hurts the most,” Melba coach Spencer Trappett said. “These kids, in five years, they’ll talk about this game that they lost. They won’t talk about the 40 in a row and how unbelievable that was. I mean, teams just don’t do that.

“But this will be the one that hurts.”

The No. 2 Bears (25-2) suffocated the No. 1 Mustangs (25-1) defensively with their trademark zone defense. Bear Lake held 2A’s top-scoring offense to just 13 points after halftime, turning a 10-point deficit into an 11-point victory.

The defending champs shot 5-for-24 (21%) from the floor in the second half, including 0-for-9 behind the 3-point line. The Bears shut down the lanes into the paint and pushed Melba farther and farther out past the 3-point line.

Meanwhile, Bear Lake sank 11-of-15 (73%) from the floor after the break.

“I knew we weren’t just gonna roll over,” Bear Lake coach Brandon Carlsen said. “They were going to battle, and whatever happened, happened. We beat them up, and you see the result.”

Junior Bryson Crane sparked the Bears offensively, scoring his team’s first nine points of the second half to cut the deficit to one. Bear Lake couldn’t get over the hump until the fourth quarter, when Brady Shaul buried a 3-pointer from the wing on the first possession. It was all Bear Lake the rest of the way as the Mustangs settled for perimeter shots.

Melba also coughed up nine second-half turnovers.

“That was the difference in the game,” Trappett said. “We tried to set things up to move the ball around. On a zone, you’ve got to pass the ball and move it. In the second half, we just did not do that like we did in the first half. And that made a difference.”

Shaul scored a game-high 18 points for Bear Lake, which also won the 2A football state title last fall. And Crane finished with 14 points and seven rebounds after sitting much of the half in foul trouble.

Junior Cache Beus led Melba with 12 points and 10 rebounds. But he also battled foul trouble throughout the second half. He picked up his fifth foul on a tie-up under the Bear Lake basket with Melba trailing by seven with 4 minutes left in the game.

Melba scored just four points the rest of the way.

“It wasn’t the game changer,” Trappett said. “We were struggling before that ever happened. We’re just a different team with him on the floor, and it hurt when he came out.”

COLE VALLEY EARNS TROPHY: Three players scored in double figures to lead Cole Valley Christian to a 63-49 win over Ririe in the 2A consolation final at Capital High School.

Eli Kingery led the way with 16 points, Max Myers added 12 and Isaiah Holsinger had 11 for the Chargers (21-6). Cole Valley Christian, last at the state tourney in 2020, was 22-for-26 from the free-throw line.

St. Maries (19-6) beat district rival Kellogg 57-46 in the third-place game.

1A DIVISION I STATE TOURNAMENT

LAKESIDE UPSETS LAPWAI: The Knights toppled Goliath, snapping Lapwai’s 62-game winning streak with an 81-79 victory in overtime.

No. 3 Lakeside (18-3) led by as many as 23 points early in the second half before top-seeded Lapwai (26-1) mounted a comeback. But the Knights held on in overtime, sinking 11-of-16 free throws to clinch the school’s second state championship in four years.

Senior Vander Brown led Lakeside with 29 points, nine rebounds, four assists and four steals. And junior Liam Hendrickx added 23 points in the battle of Coeur d’Alene and Nez Perce reservation schools.

Lapwai junior Kase Wynott, who holds multiple Big Sky offers, finished with 40 points and 10 rebounds.

Elsewhere in the 1A Division I tournament, Grace (22-5) beat Castleford 50-38 in the third-place game, and Potlatch (20-8) topped Carey 69-58 in the consolation final.

1A DIVISION II STATE TOURNAMENT

KENDRICK WINS TITLE: The two-time defending state football champs topped No. 1 Richfield 59-57 for their first boys basketball title since 1985.

Freshman Nathan Tweit led the No. 3 Tigers (20-3) with 20 points on 8-for-15 shooting. Jagger Hewett added 12 points, and Hunter Taylor finished with 11 for Kendrick, which went undefeated against 1A Division II competition.

COUNCIL WINS TROPHY: Porter McLinn scored 23 more points to carry the Lumberjacks to a 48-41 win over district rival Cascade in the consolation final. McLinn finished the tournament averaging 20.7 points and seven rebounds per game as the Lumberjacks (20-6) captured a state tournament trophy for the second straight year.

Tyler Thurston scored a game-high 23 points for Cascade, which finished 17-9.

Meanwhile, defending champ Rockland (23-3) brought home the third-place trophy with a 57-46 win over Watersprings.