Revenge tour complete: Rockland rallies back in 1A championship game to keep eastern Idaho title streak alive

NAMPA — Coming into Saturday, the last time eastern Idaho went without at least one boys’ basketball state championship was at the end of the 1997-98 season. Rockland was eastern Idaho’s only team that had a chance to extend that streak to 28 years.

The Bulldogs had to overcome a slow start at the Ford Idaho Center, but did, beating Garden Valley 60-57 to claim the 1A Idaho High School Boys Basketball State Championship.

Rockland head coach Shae Neal, who grew up in Malad and is in his ninth season as the Bulldogs’ head coach, said there was a great deal of pride on the line for District 5-6’s only championship game qualifier.

“A lot of pressure, being the only bullet in the gun, to hit the target,” he told EastIdahoSports.com after the game. “It’s a lot of pressure, but the kids came out and did well.”

Not only did Rockland bring eastern Idaho what will be its only boys basketball banner this year, they did what they set out to do before the season started — got revenge for their tournament shortcomings of recent years.

“Revenge tour is fulfilled. Yes, we completed the revenge tour,” he said. “It’s as sweet as it will ever be.”

Neal is much more used to sitting back and enjoying the Rockland show than having to stem an early tidal wave, but he had some bleeding to stop Saturday morning.

Behind senior Maxon Yearsley, the Wolverines hit four 3-pointers and jumped out to a 20-10 lead in the first seven minutes of the game. Neal used two timeouts in that stretch, forced to demand more from the Bulldog defense and rebounding.

Junior guard Zach Permann, Rockland’s defensive anchor, said Neal’s message during the second timeout was that the Bulldogs needed to be dawgs.

“At that point, Garden Valley wanted it more than us,” Permann recalled. “So we had to come out, crash the boards, and play Bulldog basketball.”

Permann, Rockland’s walking tourniquet, was the one tasked with turning off the running faucet Yearsley had become. After scoring 15 points in the first seven minutes of the game, Yearsley could find zero room the rest of the way and scored just four over the final 25 minutes.

“He sways the momentum of the game from a loss to a win,” Neal said of Perman. “He’s a huge impact player for us defensively.”

Yearsley had high praise for Permann after the game, saying he “definitely made it a little more difficult.”

“He’s definitely a baller. He’s quick,” Yearsley said of Permann.

Permann said after the game that he is fine being the guy who plays 24 minutes and takes just one shot, as he did Saturday, because he knows and embraces his role as the head of the spear on defense.

“I love it,” he said. “From the day I was born, I was born to do it. … It’s a staple in Rockland, defense, so I love being able to shut dudes down and get us going.”

While Permann and the Rockland defense found its groove, the Bulldog offense needed to get something going, and that effort came from several different directions.

Rockland allowed just 10 points in the second quarter, but they only scored 10 and went into halftime down by five, 30-25.

Junior point guard Xavier Parrish said that the key to turning things around was a Neal pep talk in the locker room.

“It was just going in at halftime and getting our butts chewed out,” Parrish said. “We hunkered down and got the job done.”

Neal said his thoughts going into the half were simple: “Oh crap.”

But he knew coming into the game that Garden Valley was going to have a quarter where they got hot, especially from 3, and Rockland would have to weather that barrage, survive and fight back.

“They chose the first quarter to make that run,” the coach said.

Parrish led the effort on both ends of the court to start the third, recording a steal, rebound and seven points in the opening 90 seconds of the second half. With a 3, Parrish gave Rockland its first lead since an 8-6 advantage early in the game.

Neal talked about the leadership Parrish has provided all season, and said he could see that Parrish was in the mindset that he could not be stopped.

“You could see it in his eyes that he was determined. We just kinda let the reins go with him,” Neal said, adding that the feeling was contagious and took over the Rockland squad.

Rockland scored 27 in the third quarter alone to take a four-point lead into the fourth. But the Wolverines weren’t done fighting, and rallied back to reclaim the lead.

The player responsible for the Bulldogs finding their first offensive rhythm of the game, junior Brayzen Gibbs, continued attacking the paint and creating offense. With Parrish and Gibbs scoring, that left some open space for Lowder, who had been defended very well all game by Garden Valley.

Gibbs finished with a game-high 23, with another 18 coming from Parrish and 16 from Lowder. Yearsely and Cody Perrin paced Garden Valley, scoring 19 apiece.

For all the work Rockland put in to overcome the early onslaught and take a lead, the Wolverines stayed their course and tied the game at 59-59 with less than four minutes left. But Parrish struck again, canning back-to-back triples to give his team a 65-59 lead.

And both teams had to finish at less than full strength, when Lowder and Permann fouled out, joined by Yearsley and Elijah Marchand from Garden Valley.

“It was definitely rough, because I’m an important player,” Lowder said about watching the end of his last high school game from the bench. “It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, because our bench was ready to go. They’ve put in as much work as I have, so it wasn’t really that scary.”

Garden Valley had one more strong push left, when senior Madix Miller hit a long 3 and was fouled for a chance to cut the Rockland lead to one.

Wolverine head coach Heather Kelly called for a timeout before the free throw, and said after the game that she considered the idea of having Miller intentionally miss with the intent of trusting her team to grab another offensive rebound — of which they collected 23 in the game, to just seven for Rockland. But she decided instead to let Miller make the free throw, foul, and hope Rockland would miss one or both.

The Bulldogs, though, got the ball to Gibbs, who had been money at the charity stripe all game.

The junior sixth man attempted 20 free throws on the game, hitting 17, including a pair with 5.7 seconds left in the game to make it a three-point game, 60-57.

Between the first and second, he exchanged a smile and a few words with senior Isaac Held.

“Isaac was like, ‘It’s just another free throw.’ I was like, ‘Oh yeah, it is,'” Gibbs said of the exchange.

Asked what it felt like to be NBA Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, known for getting to the free throw line with great frequency, for a day, Gibbs laughed before explaining that he has had days of shooting 20-plus free throws before.

“It feels awesome. It feels great,” he said. “When I was little, and my dad was the head coach at Malad … I would shoot 25 (free throws) and see how many I made. I did that for a couple of years. But never in a game.”

As the final buzzer sounded, the Bulldog bench flooded the court, led by Permann, who mugged Gibbs, and a visibly emotional Lowder, who rushed Parrish.

Lowder explained what it meant to him to bring the Bulldog program its second-ever state basketball championship.

“It’s amazing. When I was little, I was always out in the alleyway, shooting in the dark,” he said, noting that he would have his friends come over to play ball with him at all hours. “It feels great to have this complete as a team, with all the people I grew up with. … Rockland basketball is my whole life, really. It was a dream of mine to get on the team and play.”

Seniors Lowder, Held, Ethan Permann, Iver Hendrickson and CJ Wilson go out as champions, while Neal, Parrish, Gibbs and Zach Permann look forward to next year and a crop of eight freshmen who will join the program next year.

Zach is already prepared to get things going next week, and welcome those eight newbies to the Bulldog culture.

“Be Dawgs. We all play football — we’re all three-, four-sport athletes, so it’s year-round,” he said. “On Monday, we’ll be back in the gym, grinding. Those freshmen had better be ready. We’re going to push them to be great because we want to be great.”