At Capital High School, the Boise Braves fought off a late run by the Eagles and came away with a 56-34 victory.
Coming back from a 12 point deficit at halftime, Capital was able to pull within seven with about four minutes to go in the third quarter. That’s when Boise’s Joe Simpson took the game over. He was scoring from inside, heating 15 foot jumpers and finding his teammates which ultimately broke the game open.
The Braves have found a real game changer in Simpson. We saw him show signs of this when he was a junior and now he’s starting to really find his way. Tonight, when his team needed him he responded.
For the Eagles, we know they are young and they definitely showed it at times. But, they also showed a lot of confidence for a team that has very little varsity experience. They really attacked in the third quarter with their half-court traps and taking the ball to the hole strong. It shows the future is very bright at Capital.
Individually, Derrik White was impressive. Though he didn’t see a lot of playing time, he showed swagger. And that’s an important element that really can’t be taught but the rest of the team can feed off of. Combine that with Hunter Young’s natural aggressive play and fans can expect to see the Eagles upset a few teams this season.
Another new element to tonight’s game was a three-man officiating crew. It sounds like some of the officiating teams in the SIC have agreed to only take payment for two officials and then split that amongst three. We’ll see how it goes but this could be the next wave of changes for high school basketball in Idaho. Though, as one coach pointed out tonight, it may be a better investment to put that extra money into shot clocks. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.