Don't Stop Believin': Centennial shocks No. 1 Lake City to advance to Idaho 5A boys basketball state semifinals

NAMPA - The warm-ups said it all.

The Centennial High School boys basketball team came out in the usual striped warm-up pants, but its tops were a little different. They didn’t stick out like their red and white bottoms. They were plain black with one simple word spread across the chest: "Believe."

Despite nobody outside of their own locker room giving them any shot at all, the Patriots stuck to that simple, yet powerful word. It worked.

No. 8 Centennial stunned No. 1 and prohibitive favorite Lake City 72-67 in the opening round of the Idaho Class 5A State Boys Basketball Tournament Thursday at the Ford Idaho Center.

The Patriots (15-10) will play No. 5 Rigby (17-8) at 5 p.m. Friday right back inside the Ford Idaho Center.

“In the end, we knew we’ve got the guys,” Centennial coach Josh Aipperspach said. “We’ve been doubted all year. I know what these guys can do, and so we just believed. We have been believing all week when we ran through their stuff.

“We got a bunch of fighters in there, man. Our backs have been against the wall all year. And you know what? These guys believed in them, believed in us and went out there and took care of business.”

There were multiple reasons why others didn’t share that belief.

No one on the roster had any state tournament experience, with their last state appearance coming in 2018.

They had a losing record against 5A qualifiers (4-5).

And six of their losses had come by 16 points or more.

But none of those facts shook Centennial’s belief.

“I believed at the start of the week that we were going to win this thing,” senior Weston Johnson said. “I thought they were going to come into this like, ‘Oh, you’re playing Centennial High School. Nothing special. Eight seed.’ So I knew we were going to come in and beat these guys cause they were going to goof off the whole game.”

The Patriots came right of the gate and showed just that with an 11-4 start thanks to three consecutive 3-pointers. They maintained the lead for the rest of the half after going into the locker 6-of-10 from behind the arc. Centennial came in leading the Southern Idaho Conference in made 3s (87) and 3-point percentage (36.6).

But the perimeter shooting cooled off significantly in the second half. The Patriots went 1-of-7 in the third and that allowed the Timberwolves (22-2) to take their first lead of the game at 40-37 on the old-fashioned 3-point play by Nathan Hocking with 5 minutes and 32 seconds left in the third. Lake City outscored Centennial 19-10 for the quarter and seemed like it was finally going to put the underdogs away for good heading into the fourth up 50-45.

The Patriots refused to go away, though. They regained the lead for good with 3:37 remaining on a layin by Weston Johnson. It ended up being a part of a 15-2 run over nearly a four-minute stretch that gave them a 63-56 advantage with 1:14 to go. Perhaps even more impressive, Centennial did so without hitting its bread and butter 3-pointer.

“We got the team together and we said, ‘Defense is going to win this game.’ And that’s how we get our offense going,” senior Kaden Christensen said. “We were on the floor. We had players getting injured. It was a defensive effort from everyone.

“That’s how we won the game.”

The Timberwolves did get back to within a possession at 66-64 on a deep 3-pointer by junior Kolton Mitchell with 41.3 seconds left. But the Patriots made 6 of 8 free throws in the closing moments and Lake City didn’t have an answer. Mitchell missed a 3 that would have cut the deficit down to one and a floater. And by then, Centennial’s lead had grown back to six at 70-64 with only 11.1 ticks remaining. 

Mitchell hit a layin at the buzzer. But no Patriot players were around him. They were too busy celebrating an unforeseen upset of the wire-to-wire No. 1 team in the state media poll, last year’s state runner-up and a team that has three Division I prospects, including 6-foot-11 junior center Blake Buchanan, who has offers from the likes of Pepperdine.

“I kind of went back to our 2017 team (state runner-up),” Aipperspach said. “It (was) the exact same thing. We played Madison round one and nobody in the world gave us a shot. So we talked about that. We told stories. We said, ‘Guys, we’ve done it before.’”

Christensen led three players in double figures with a game-high 27 points on 50% shooting from the field. Johnson had a double-double of 19 points and 10 rebounds, while senior Tyler Shipp added 12 points for the Patriots, who were picked sixth in their own conference in the preseason coaches poll.

“No one outside (us) believed that we were even going to make it to state,” Christensen said. “And now we just beat the No. 1 seed.”

Lake City, the consensus No. 1 overall team in the state, had four players in double figures with Mitchell (20), Buchanan (14), junior Nathan Hocking (13) and junior Zach Johnson (10). The Timberwolves will play Eagle (20-5) at noon Friday at Rocky Mountain in a loser-out game.

(All photos by Loren Orr)