Sunny Evans had to find a balance like she was tightroping over the Grand Canyon. She wanted to put together a memento celebrating her Pocatello team’s district title, but she had to do so ahead of Thursday’s championship game against Century, which sounds like an easy way to jinx her team. So she weighed two things in her mind: It was a little risky, but she believed in her group.
“We weren’t overlooking anybody, but we knew we put ourselves in a good position,” Evans said. “So we felt like we were gonna get to use that board.”
That board was a huge piece of laminated paper, shaped rectangular and designed like a giant ticket, complete with fake barcodes on either side and “Ticket Punched 2023” square in the middle. Evans enlisted the help of her son, Kansas, and when the Thunder dispatched the Diamondbacks with a 48-28 win, he handed it to the team — making everyone involved with the process look like they had the future on speed dial.
“I wanted us to be better in the second half,” Evans said, “but I know Century well enough to know that they were just gonna keep fighting and keep battling, and that’s what it was. We made enough plays to not really let them cut into the lead. I think it was really important for us to come out and set the tone, and I loved our approach in the first half.”
Sophomore forward Kennasyn Garza posted a game-best 14 points for the Thunder, who raced to a double-digit lead nearly before anyone in The Palace could settle into their seats. They led 16-8 after one, 36-16 at halftime and though their offense slowed in the second half, they had already created enough separation to sit on their lead and cruise to another win.
In some ways, the game was a product of the two that preceded it. This was Poky’s third straight win over Century. The teams met once in the final week of the regular season, once in the second round of the district tournament, then once on Thursday night. Each game felt similar, at least to some degree: They became slugfests, games with little offense and frenetic pace, a race to see who could turn it over less and hit enough free throws when it mattered most.
Poky’s win for the district crown was not that, at least not early on. The Thunder shot it so well in the first half — they connected on 4 of 7 triples in the first two periods, makes from Miah Lusk and Alivia Marshall and Taylee Rogers and Taylor Bunderson — that even when things sputtered in the second half, it didn’t matter. Pocatello held Century to just 23% shooting for the game, benefiting from 21 turnovers, which is the kind of defensive effort you need when your offense crawls to a halt.
“Their maturity and the way they prepared themselves all week, I think really paid off,” said Evans, whose team is headed to state for the first time since 2014. “They did a good job of getting to the spots that we wanted them to get. They moved the ball really well in the the first half, really shared it. We always just say, you gotta guard everybody on our team, and we have confidence in each other. So they got to their spots and shared the ball and knocked some stuff down.”
Let’s pause for a moment. Say in February 2021, you decided to go off the grid, to move into the woods, to cut off all communication with the world and throw away all your electronic devices. You spent two years living this way. Then, this week, you decide to rejoin society. You get a job and start living a normal life.
If you attended Thursday’s game, you might think you had entered an alternate universe.
Pocatello junior Elle Hokanson drives past Century defender Adee Butler during Thursday's game.
Kyle Riley/For the Journal
Two years ago, Pocatello went 1-20. In Evans’ second year at the helm of the program, the Thunder registered one win in December. Then they spent the next two months losing 15 straight games, some close and some blowouts, but all were losses. Current Poky junior Elle Hokanson was a freshman on that team.
“Now she’s a junior and we’re going to state,” Evans said. “I’m just happy for her that she’s a part of it, but happy for the kids to come in and not get caught up in old mentalities or old ways of thinking. They have some goals for themselves and they’ve just taken care of business along the way.”
Evans explains the transformation this way: In 2019, when she became head coach, she had a group of seniors that she liked — “that laid a foundation,” she said. The Thunder won just three games that year, the final season of the Great Basin Ten conference, but those girls established a standard for groups to come. Three years later, Poky rosters exactly zero seniors, but they’ve taken that torch and shared it among themselves, passing the fire around like candy, earning a trip to state just two years after such an idea would get you laughed out of a sports book.
Turns out, you have to take risks to celebrate big wins. The Thunder just have a bigger one in mind.
{div class=”asset-tagline text-muted”}Greg Woods is a sports reporter at the Idaho State Journal. Follow him on Twitter at GregWWoods.{/div}
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