MCMINNVILLE — Perfection was needed to take down the titans that have dominated the 5A basketball world for nearly a decade. It required a perfect play, an even more perfect pass and a perfect finish.

The Summit High boys basketball team found all three, especially the finish, as an inbound pass found the hands of senior Mac Bledsoe, who sank an alley-oop shot as time expired.

Summit 52, Wilsonville 50.

For the first time, the team from Bend can call itself state champions.

For 31 minutes and 58.7 seconds, the No. 2 Wildcats and the No. 1 Storm went blow for blow, like prizefighters in a rematch of last year’s championship meeting. Wilsonville won that contest a year ago 43-36 — a score burned into the minds and posted on the bedroom walls of Summit’s Pearson Carmichael and Collin Moore.

“It was always in the back of our head,” Carmichael said. “We knew we were going to win it, obviously we didn’t know it was going to be this hard. I’m glad we were able to stick together and fight as a team and come out with a win.”

With four seconds remaining, Wilsonville senior Kallen Gutridge, who eliminated two teams in the tournament with clutch plays in crunch time, sank two free throws to tie the game at 50.

Summit got the ball at half court with 1.3 seconds remaining after a clunky clock operation where it didn’t start on the ensuing inbound. The play call was designed to get Carmichael a running start toward the basket to try for a game-winning shot.

But Wilsonville was prepared for that play. So instead, Summit coach Jon Frazier told Moore, the inbound passer, to “throw it to Mac” and then gave Bledsoe, who was in the opposite corner behind the 3-point line, a finger to the sky, singling him to be ready for the lob at the rim.

The Storm had never practiced what they were about to try. And Moore, despite his many talents on the basketball court, has a blind spot on throwing alley-oop passes.

“I would practice them with Pearson,” Moore said. “And they just never went great.”

So basically it was the perfect time for a play that no one — not even Carmichael, who thought the game was going to overtime when the ball sailed toward the hoop and not to him — saw coming.

Moore could not have handed the ball more perfectly to Bledsoe who elevated above the unsuspecting Wilsonville defender and sunk the ball as the final buzzer sounded.

All that remained was bedlam.

Bledsoe landed on his back. His teammates swarmed him. The standing-room only crowd at Linfield University erupted. The Summit students who made the trip over the mountain stormed the court and a party three years in the making was on.

“There was no time to think about it,” Bledsoe said. “We just had to execute. It was an easy layup. If I could run it back, I would have dunked it.”

Wilsonville (25-4 overall) has been the class of the 5A basketball world for several years. Excluding the two postseasons that were canceled due to COVID-19, the Wildcats had won three straight titles dating back to 2019. They have also been in every state title game since 2015.

With multiple starters and core players from last year’s Wilsonville-Summit title game returning, all season it seemed that the two teams were on a collision course to meet once again in the title game. Neither team had lost since late December. The Wildcats were riding a 20-game winning streak, while the Storm had won its last 18.

Make it 19 straight wins for the Storm, now.

And the Wildcats’ stars showed up in the championship game. Gutridge, despite being hounded by Moore, finished with 16 points, four rebounds and four assists. Senior Kyle Counts, Wilsonville’s Player of the Game, finished with a team-high 20 points, with six rebounds and four assists. Junior Emmitt Fee posted a near double-double with eight points and nine rebounds.

But it wasn’t enough to beat the Storm.

“Summit deserved it,” said Wilsonville coach Chris Roche. “They’ve worked hard for three years and were very close to making it happen.”

The start of the game followed a similar pattern to last year’s matchup. The game was tied on four separate occasions. There were two lead changes. But just like last year, Wilsonville hit a 3 in the closing seconds to take an early 16-11 lead after the first eight minutes.

A five-point hole to Wilsonville might as well be 15. The Wildcats have suffocated talented teams in the tournament with their disciplined defense.

Although the Storm got down by as many as seven points in the second half, the players scraped and clawed their way back into the game.

“They weren’t going to lose,” Frazier said. “They just found a way to make it happen.”

One could only imagine the trouble Summit (24-4) might have been in during the first half had it not been for Carmichael. Of the Storm’s 26 first-half points, the 6-foot-7 Boise State signee accounted for 17 of them.

Saturday was a redemption game for Carmichael. In last year’s title game Wilsonville held him to just 10 points. This time around, he finished with a game-high 27 points while grabbing seven rebounds.

It is a performance earned him Player of the Game honors, a unanimous spot on the all-tournament team and one that should all but solidify his bid to repeat as the state’s 5A Player of the Year as well put him squarely in the conversation for the prestigious Gatorade Player of the Year — an award given to the best basketball player in Oregon.

“Last year was rough,” Carmichael said. “I had to prove to people that I was capable of doing big-time things in big-time moments.”

The 2023 championship game was a teaching moment for the Storm on how to deploy Carmichael against Wilsonville in this year’s final. Last year’ Wilsonville’s defense forced Carmichael take jump shots from the outside. This time around, the Summit game plan made a concerted effort to get Carmichael the ball in different spots on the court.

Boy did it work.

“We wanted to move him more and get him in dynamic catches where he could score at the rim,” Frazier said. “We wanted to make (Wilsonville) defend him in different ways. He’s a three-level scorer, so it was important that we put him in position at all three levels.”

Summit had fought back to make a 40-38 game going into the final quarter.

In last year’s title game, Wilsonville was able to milk the clock with long offensive possessions. With a shot clock added to Oregon high school basketball this season, the Wildcats did not have that luxury.

Rather than one player taking over for the Storm, four different players scored in the final quarter, which saw the game tied on four different occasions.

Bledsoe scored six of his 10 points (his ninth and 10th being the most emphatic). Senior Paxon Kettering’s only two points were scored in the fourth to tie the game at 46. Moore, who struggled from the field for most of the game, scored two of his 12 points in the fourth quarter to give Summit a 48-46 lead — its first lead since last in the first quarter.

“Individuals don’t win state titles, teams do,” Frazier said. “This team is incredible. Each guy is a star in their role. They were all prepared when their time came.”

For three years it looked as though the time had come for Summit to win its first basketball title. Twice, in the 2022 6A title game and last year’s 5A title game, the Storm were denied.

Those feelings of getting so close to goal but not being able to ring it in, stayed with the Storm. And it fueled them to finally reach basketball’s mountain top.

“I just kept thinking ‘we are going to be back,’” said Moore, who was part of the two teams that came up a win short of a title. “For it to end in a dream-like way, you couldn’t have written it in a better way.”