Bear Lake entered post-season play on the Girls side of things as a heavy underdog in the 2A southeast district and would start things off needing a play-in game at home against Aberdeen for the right to even make the official bracket as a 4 seed. Aberdeen also happened to be the Bear Lake girls final opponent of the regular season meaning the Bears would face the Tigers in back to back games just 4 days apart both at Bear Lake High School and both ending in very similar fashion with the Bears taking the season finale 52-25 and then taking the rematch in the play-in game 55-25.
In the first official round of the double elimination bracket the Bears went to Soda Springs as heavy underdogs and showed some serious grit even holding a 6 point lead well into the 2nd quarter. That lead wouldn’t last however as for the 2nd time this season at Soda’s home gym, the Bears early lead would vanish with a flurry of scoring to end the 1st half and then continued into the start of the 2nd half as quarter 3 began with an 18 point run by the Cardinals and the game would ultimately go as some may have expected with a final score of 52-30 in favor of the top seeded Cardinals.
Many would have likely predicted that Bear Lake’s season would likely be ending 1 game later as they would face #2 seed Malad after the Dragons were themselves upset in round 1 losing to a West Side team that Malad had swept in the regular season head to head but the third time proved to be the charm for the Pirates and gave Bear Lake a daunting round 2 matchup with the 2nd seeded and likely angry Dragons. However the Bears managed to keep the Dragons snake-bit in this postseason handing them their 2nd strait upset loss to the surprise of many after the 2 regular season matchups had ended with Malad wins of 10 and 9 points, it was Bear Lake who took the 61-56 win with both team’s seasons on the line.
The season would come to an end for the Bears a week later however as unfortunately the magic carpet playoff ride had to come to an end eventually and while they put up a great fight, the girls ultimately fell in West Side to the Pirates team that will now need to defeat Soda Springs twice in a row in the finals to win the district title. The Bear Lake girls fell by the score of 55-48 to the 2nd seeded Pirates on the road but the good news is the Bears figure to return a vast majority of their starting lineup which featured a number of sophomores and a few juniors this season so perhaps the Bears can ride the subtle wave of momentum they got going in this playoff into the start of next season.
