From obscurity to favorite: First-year Owyhee boys basketball program readies to make more history at state

MERIDIAN - The Owyhee boys basketball team heard the same question over and over again when it walked into Section 7 last June.

“Who the heck is this team?,” senior Jack Payne said.

The answer was a first-year program.

“We had a team laugh at us before a game,” Payne added.

Fast forward to today, and no one is laughing now.

The Storm are one of the favorites to walk out of the Ford Idaho Center this weekend with the Idaho Class 5A state championship and banner. No. 2 Owyhee (21-3) will play Southern Idaho Conference foe Mountain View (15-9) in the opening round at 7 p.m. Thursday.

“People doubted us from the start,” sophomore Liam Campbell said. “We knew we were special and we’re going to keep working to be special.”

It began with a blockbuster announcement on Feb. 9, 2021. The Owyhee athletics Twitter page announced the hiring of Andy Harrington. He had revitalized Middleton with three consecutive postseason appearances, back-to-back district titles and the first state championship since 1965 last season.

Harrington took a week off to enjoy it, but then went right to work at his new venture.

“There were only a few jobs that I would have even considered. But it was a new school where I could create my own culture from the top at the start,” Harrington said. “There’s a ton of growth over here in this area. When you look at growth, you know there’s talent coming in and that was really appealing to me.”

The talent was even more than Harrington was expecting, though.

Payne was an all-state player for Boise High where he helped win the first postseason game in nearly a quarter century last season. He wasn’t planning on going anywhere. But then his parents got divorced.

“That was pretty hard on me and I kind of just wanted out,” Payne said.

He was joined by others like 6-foot-7 ninth grade Oregon transfer Jackson Rasmussen, who already has interest from Boise State, and Campbell, a top-35 national recruit for his class holding multiple NCAA Division I offers, including USC.

But it wasn’t known how all of them would mesh. They actually didn’t have a court to play on when they first got together for open gyms last spring.

Owyhee had to practice at places such as Heroes Park in Meridian and Star Middle School to prepare for its summer tournament slate that included the renowned national Section 7 Tournament in Phoenix, Arizona.

While the Storm had competed down in Preston and Salt Lake City, Utah, Section 7 was the first time the entire team was together at once. Campbell, in the middle of moving from California power Harvard-Westlake (Los Angeles) actually met the team there. Their debut was a 69-49 win over Carl Hayden - the No. 1 team in Minnesota and the same one which had laughed at them earlier. Owyhee ended up going 4-0 on the way to winning the Glendale Bracket.

By the end of the summer, Campbell was a household name, Payne received multiple D1 offers before committing to Colorado State and the Storm were suddenly not only the team to beat in the SIC, but the state, too.

“They really did a lot for me,” Payne said. “I love this group of guys. It’s a lot different than any team I’ve ever been on.”

So Owyhee came into the high school season with high expectations. It was picked first in the SIC preseason coaches poll.

However, the Storm did begin the year 4-3, including an 80-76 four overtime loss to league rival Eagle.

“We were mad about that. We were holding on to that for a while,” Harrington said. “I’m still mad about that, but it was good for us. ... They exposed things that we needed to work on.”

They responded by placing third at the prestigious national Damien Classic in La Verne, California. Campbell was named to multiple all-tournament teams.

But Owyhee runs up to 10 guys deep. They include in-state junior transfers Titus Bailey (Capital), Preston Sherburne (Rocky Mountain) and Barrett Fernandez (Rocky Mountain), along with ninth graders Cam Downie and Mac Savedra, who has been spotlighted in publications such as SLAM Magazine.

“A lot of people like to just look at Jack and Liam, but we were never going to be about a couple guys,” Harrington said. “We demand that everyone play hard.”

It resulted in the Storm only losing once to a team from Idaho and finishing the season winning their last 17 games in a row. Included in the streak was a 57-54 win over reigning state champion Meridian that punched the program’s first ticket to state before making more school history by capturing the District III title against Eagle with a 71-49 payback victory.

“It meant a lot. We really wanted to be the first program to do it and really put Owyhee athletics on the map,” Campbell said. “We knew we could do it. All we had to do was put in the time and the work and we did. But we’re not done yet. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Owyhee will now look to do something that no boys basketball program has done in recent memory: win a state title in the first year of existence. The last known basketball team to achieve the feat was the Lake City girls 27 years ago.

In order to join the rare company, Owyhee will have to run a gauntlet that includes playing Mountain View for a third time, playing either Meridian or perennial power Madison and potentially No. 1 Lake City, last year’s state runner-up and the top-ranked overall team in Idaho.

“The toughest team wins, not the most talented team,” Harrington said.

“We just want to play the best we can play, and I think that we know that we have a chance, if we perform at a high level, to win something bigger. It’s not gonna be easy and there are a lot of great teams, but I think that those guys have pretty big goals. We’ve just got to keep getting better.”

(Featured file photo by Loren Orr)