Shortly after the calendar flipped into the new year, Pocatello coach Joe Green had something like a revelation. The JV team, he noticed, rostered this thin sophomore with blonde hair that rested on his head like a mop. He played varsity some, but Green and his assistants liked Kesler Vaughan’s aggressiveness, his mentality, his toughness.

He’s a winner, Green realized.

So on Jan. 6, Green ended Vaughan’s double duty between the JV and varsity squads and pulled him up to his team, making him a full-time rotation player for the Thunder. His decision paid immediate dividends. Vaughan knew his role. He knocked down triples, guarded like hell, and helped Pocatello reel off win after win after win.

Someday, when Green retires and reminisces on his time as Pocatello’s head coach, he’ll smile when he thinks about his choice to pull Vaughan up. If he hadn’t, Vaughan wouldn’t have been under the hoop to stick back the game-winning basket in a 64-62 4A District 5 tournament win over Century Thursday night, and he wouldn’t have connected on two gargantuan triples to make it all possible.

Instead, after he knocked down a 3-pointer to tie the game in regulation and one to take the lead in overtime, he crashed the glass and put back the two points the Thunder needed to move on in this district tournament. Now, Pocatello gets a week off before hosting the winner of Century/Preston in next week’s district championship game.

“It was like slow motion,” Vaughan said. “I just jumped in the air. The rebound came down. It was like slow motion. Just put it back in.”

After the game ended and a crowd caught its breath, Vaughan walked back onto the court, where a group of cheerleaders and teammates chanted his name. Kes-ler. Kes-ler. Vaughan smiled. He was only a few feet away from the right wing, which is where he slung home two triples that engineered this Pocatello win: In regulation, he tied the game at 54-54 with 39 seconds left. In overtime, after Century took a two-point lead, he splashed another trey, this one to retake the lead with three minutes to go.

That’s the thing about this Pocatello team, though. Two weeks ago, when these teams met in this same gym, Century raced to an early lead and cruised the rest of the way. Same goes for their first meeting, at Pocatello, when the Diamondbacks controlled things and freshman phenom Isiah Harwell singed the Thunder’s defense.

The same movie threatened to roll early in Thursday’s game. Century seized an early lead and took a 14-point advantage into halftime. The Diamondbacks were playing, well, like the Diamondbacks: They were using their speed, their size, their athleticism to bury defenders around the basket and dare the Thunder to score inside. On the scoreboard, Pocatello only hung around by making 11 of 14 free throws in the first half.

But in their heads, something else happened.

“We just didn’t panic,” Pocatello coach Joe Green said. “In the other two games, I felt like we panicked a little bit, tried to hit home run shots. But we just stayed the course today. Got those five easy passes and waited until we got a good look.”

In crunch time, the Thunder got good looks by the bushel. Guard Ryan Payne, who totaled 16 points, posted five in the third, which helped Pocatello kickstart its rally. Julian Bowie, who scored 11, registered six in the fourth quarter and overtime. Guard Matt Christensen, who tallied 15 crucial points, knocked down two free throws in the fourth and sank a mid-range jumper in the extra session.

But that group, important as it was on offense, swung the game on defense. In the first half, Century shot an asinine 78% from the field, missing just four shots. In the second stanza, that number plummeted to 29%. Harwell scored 11 points in the first half. He went scoreless in the second. Century forward Nash Harding did his darndest to keep his team in the game, registering 12 of his 17 points in the second half, but Pocatello largely silenced his teammates.

“At halftime, we just looked at the score, like, we gave them 42 points. That’s way too many,” Green said. “We’re not gonna score that many on Century. We just talked about, no more layups, no more offensive rebounds. Just a gut-check for them. They responded.”

“We’ve gotta do a better job of getting touches for guys to get good shots,” Century coach Ryan Frost said. “I take a lot of blame. I think I made our guys more passive than they needed to be.”

Now this tournament gets really interesting. Century hosts Preston on Tuesday. The winner of that game visits Pocatello in the district title game. In this three-team conference, only one team goes to state, which makes next week feel like the final fight in The Matrix.

Vaughan doesn’t resemble Keanu Reeves much, but he might be the one.

“Just confidence,” Vaughan said. “I’ve made those shots 100 times in my church. Just confidence. Straight confidence. Catch it, shoot. It’s the shot I shoot every day in my church, you know?”