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This Day In Sports…March 4, 2020, five years ago today:

Boise State becomes the first Mountain West team in history to win four consecutive women’s conference tournament championships when it outlasts Fresno State 80-76 in overtime at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. It was also the Broncos’ fifth title in six years. They had been the preseason Mountain West favorites but were the No. 2 seed in Vegas after the Bulldogs rolled through the regular season league schedule.  

Since late January, the Boise State women had been consumed by the goal of getting one more shot at Fresno State. The Broncos, which earlier in the season had let a handful of fourth-quarter leads slip away, fended off some dreaded déjà vu. Fresno State had rallied from a 17-point deficit to win in January at ExtraMile Arena, and Boise State saw a nine-point advantage evaporate in this one. But the Broncos, led by tournament MVP A’Shanti Coleman, drilled things down in OT. Coleman was named tournament MVP after averaging 19.7 points and eight rebounds in three victories while shooting 59 percent from the field.

Fortunately, Boise State got it done before COVID-19 shut down the sports world a week later. Unfortunately, the NCAA Women’s Tournament was wiped out, as was everything else, and the Broncos didn’t get a chance to play in their fourth straight Dance. At first, the NCAA announced March 11 that the men’s and women’s events would be played without fans. A day later, the whole thing was axed. It was the first and only time the women’s tournament has been canceled since it debuted in 1982.  

For coach Gordy Presnell, it was his fifth Mountain West tournament championship and sixth conference tournament title at Boise State (the Broncos also won the WAC in 2007). Prior to coming to Boise, Presnell spent 18 seasons as head coach at Seattle Pacific, where he won seven league crowns. He has won 16 Coach of the Year honors in his career. Little-remembered fact: Presnell is a native of Lapwai and graduated from Northwest Nazarene in 1983. His overall collegiate career record is 767-382 going into tonight’s home finale against Utah State. 

(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.) 

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