The thing about Firth's final drive, about the stop Bear Lake needed to seal its 14-6 win in this 2A state championship game Thursday night at Holt Arena, is that it never felt in doubt. It felt inevitable. It felt like, faced with the nigh-impossible task of corralling lightning-quick quarterback Gage Vasquez and all the Cougars' other playmakers, the Bears never blinked. They never faltered, never hesitated, never abandoned all the ideals that led them on this wondrous journey to begin with. So after Bear Lake completed the series, jogging off the field after yielding barely 10 yards, the Bears began to celebrate. They hugged each other. They laughed. They looked up at the stands, where most of their town of 6,000 stood in support, soaking in the moment for everything it meant: Bear Lake's first-ever state championship. A sublime season completed. A win on the stage where the Bears had never been before — but where they danced like their names were all Michael Jackson.

"We were trying to switch every screen and every handoff. They slipped it. Both guys went with the ballhandler," said ISU guard Brock Mackenzie, who scored 15 points and was guarding his man in the corner on that last play. "I didn't stunt up on the shot. So a lot of things went wrong. No one's pointing fingers at anyone. It's a team effort."

The reality is that, for as much as ISU (1-3) blew its coverage on that game-winning triple, Mackenzie is right: A lot more had to happen to put the Bengals in that position.

With a shade under a minute left, ISU ran that same play for forward Jared Rodriguez, the team's leading scorer with 19 points, who had already made three long balls. He missed this one. Then, on an inbounds play under the basket, Mackenzie fell for a fake cut from Smith, who caught a backdoor pass for a dunk, helping Denver draw within two with 40 seconds left. Then ISU blew a switch on Bruner, who made the Bengals pay.

Sometimes when athletes say something is nobody's fault in particular, they're taking care to protect their teammates. Not in this case. Mackenzie had a point. On two possessions with chances to ice the game in the final two minutes, ISU came up with exactly zero points. Rodriguez's misfire can be excused — sometimes you just miss, and besides, ISU executed that play well.

Not so on the Bengals' final full possession, which started with 40 seconds to play. They ran the shot clock down to around 10 seconds, hoping to get a paint touch for forward Brayden Parker — "to give ourselves a chance to at least get fouled in that situation," Looney said. Except when Parker caught the ball, Denver had forced him much farther away from the basket than ISU had drawn up, and the Pioneers' ball pressure delayed the Bengals' action, which is why Parker had to force up a contested fadeaway to beat the shot clock. It clanged off the rim.

"You can't learn without putting yourselves in these kinds of positions," Looney said. "We could look at a lot of things. We had a missed free throw. We missed a technical free throw. We turn it over a few too many times in crucial moments. Late game, we didn't execute offensively exactly how we wanted to. We didn't execute defensively the way we discussed the last possession of the game. At the end of the day, to win, you have to make winning plays in all those situations."

Maybe this wouldn't have frustrated Looney so much had his team not already blown a similar lead this season. In Idaho State's season-opener, a road test against BYU, the Bengals held a one-point lead with 20 seconds left. On the Cougars' next possession, they ran a pick-and-roll for guard Spencer Johnson, who snaked the screen, stepped back to create some separation from Mackenzie, and drilled the trey.

After that game, the Bengals felt disappointed with the result, but encouraged with their play. They felt similarly after dropping a 12-point decision to Utah on Monday. This loss to Denver leaves no such room for optimism. ISU's next game is on the road against Lindenwood on Wednesday. Until then…

"Go to practice," Looney said, "and get better."