For the Soda Springs boys basketball team, it has been 11 years — so what was another four minutes?

The Cardinals held off Declo 55-51 in the Class 3A District IV-V Championship game Thursday night at home for their first district title since 2015.

“It meant a ton to us and to the kids,” Soda Springs head coach Tom Fueschel said. “Declo called us and said they were going to bring in their whole town. We had about three quarters of the crowd from Soda. We haven’t had really a big crowd all year. So it meant a lot to the town.”

It continues a remarkable turnaround for the once-struggling program. Before last season, the Cardinals (15-7) had seven of eight losing seasons, with the lone winning campaign — 2020-21 — being barely above .500 at 12-11.

Fueschel went 11-11 in his first season, then orchestrated the best year for the program in nearly a decade. Soda Springs went 16-11, returned to state for the first time in nine years and brought home a piece of hardware with the consolation championship for the first time since 2016.

And now the Cardinals are district champions and are making back-to-back appearances at state for the first time in a decade.

“I’m definitely no wizard,” Fueschel said with a laugh. “We just got a good bunch of kids. And I got good assistant coaches.” Those assistants — Jeff Parker, Ryan Petersen, Claude Petersen, Tanner Myers and Babe Myers — have all at one point or another been a part of this revival.

Cooper Thompson led Soda Springs with a game-high 20 points.

“What do you say about Cooper’s performance in every game?” Fueschel said. “He gives you his all, whether he scores 30 points or whether he scores 10. He plays really good defense, gets a lot of rebounds, a lot of steals. We go as Cooper goes, we really do.”

Thompson was a part of a game that swung back and forth for 36 minutes.

Soda Springs led for much of the first half before finding itself down by three at 35-32 heading into the fourth quarter. But the deficit didn’t last long. Fueschel had a message for his team heading into the final frame — hit your free throws.

“I told them — I said, you guys will hit free throws as soon as you need it, because that’s just what you guys do,” Fueschel said. “You guys want me to have a heart attack? You’ll wait till the fourth quarter to hit free throws. And we hit the shots we needed to hit in the fourth quarter.”

With the game tied at 44-44, the Cardinals had a chance to win it in regulation, but a last-second attempt rimmed out to send the game to overtime.

And they didn’t miss there.

Soda Springs led from start to finish, outscoring the Hornets (12-12) 11-7 in the extra period.

“They’re gritty,” Fueschel said. “We were gritty last year and we’re really gritty this year. We just never give up. They fight right to the end, and our kids never really panicked at all.”

Including at the end of the regular season, when the Cardinals dropped three of their final four games. It dropped them to the third seed at districts. But in the end, that didn’t really matter.

“We just weren’t shooting very well — we got into a funk,” Fueschel said. “Now we’re starting to shoot a little better, and our defense has picked up a little bit too.”

They’ll need to continue that.

The seventh-seeded Cardinals open the Class 3A State Tournament this Thursday March 5 against league rival and defending state champion No. 2 Wendall (22-2) at Meridian High School.

The Trojans won the conference title and were the No. 1 seed at districts before suffering a stunning upset to the Hornets in the first round. Prior to that, they had won 15 in a row, including a 10-point win over Soda Springs. But Fueschel isn’t letting those facts deter him.

“I think we match up man to man with them really well,” Fueschel said. “If we play good, I think we can play with Wendell.”