It’s never easy to win a state championship.

It surely wasn’t easy for the Brewster girls basketball team to win its title this season, but at times, the Bears surely made things look easy.

That was especially the case at the 1A Hardwood Classic last weekend — Brewster played perhaps its best basketball of the season during its three-game run and put up one of the more impressive stretches of all-around play that the tournament has ever seen. Before the Hardwood Classic, however, the Bears won the Caribou Trail League — which proved to be the best 1A circuit in the state — and played great in district play as well.

Considering those factors, the biggest compliment that could be paid to the season Brewster just finished is that looking back on it, perhaps its dominance shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise.

Here are five factors that helped Brewster to prove without a doubt that it was the best 1A girls basketball team in the state this season:

Title game dominance

Brewster dismantled previously unbeaten Castle Rock in the championship game March 2. The Bears set a record for biggest margin of victory (31 points) and highest score (72) in a 1A title game. Brewster was the only team to score at least 60 points in all three of its Hardwood Classic contests; it held its three opponents to 24 percent shooting; and tournament most valuable player Chandler Smith led the tourney in points, 3-pointers, assists, steals and blocks.

Brewster shot 63 percent in the first half en route to taking a 47-19 halftime lead against the Rockets.

“We came out firing on all cylinders,” head coach Roger Boesel said after the title game. “We ran the floor well, played defense extremely well — we could’ve stayed in our full-court man-to-man the whole game if we wanted to. Everything was working. Everybody came ready to play.”

“We were so pumped up for this game,” Smith said. “We came out hard and we really pushed the tempo. A start like that and here we are — state champions.”

Regular season dominance

The Bears didn’t just play at a high level during the postseason, however — they won 25 of the 26 games they played during the year, and most of their victories weren’t close. Their average margin of victory was 31 points, including postseason games, and only four of their victories came by fewer than 10 points. Their best regular-season victory came on Dec. 7, when they beat Reardan 69-66 in a championship game rematch.

The one game they did lose ended up being a key point in their season, however. On Jan. 26, they suffered through a poor shooting performance in a 51-44 loss to Chelan. The players might have learned more from that loss than they did from any of their victories.

“That Chelan loss was a wake-up call,” Roger Boesel said. “We played great basketball from that point on.”

Not just Smith

What set Brewster apart from its 1A brethren this season was its depth. Smith earns a lot of praise for her play, and rightfully so, but the Bears featured four other all-leaguers and several more capable role players that formed the nucleus of a squad that played at a consistently high level all season. Guards Becky Mae Taylor and Brette Boesel proved they could hit big outside shots, take the ball to the basket and play tough defense; wing Monica Landdeck was adept at shooting and finishing layups on transition opportunities; Jessie Hammons was Brewster’s ‘dirty work’ player, sacrificing offense in order to do whatever else needed to be done for her team; and Markie Miller played big minutes off the bench as the closest thing the Bears had to a true post presence.

So during the rare stretches when Smith struggled (she didn’t score a point in the first half of the team’s quarterfinal win over Lynden Christian on Feb. 28), she could be content to play a facilitating role to help set up her teammates for open shots, knowing that a lot of the time they would knock them down. Smith, who has already drawn interest from several Division-I programs, might have led the Caribou Trail League in scoring this season, but her passing abilities might be her biggest strength.

“I told them, ‘I don’t care who scores the points as long as we get the win,’ ” Roger Boesel said. “They played well together, and that makes us a better team.”

“We have so much chemistry,” Landdeck said. “We bonded as a team. We’re all best friends — at school, on the court, we do everything together. This is the best team I could ever (ask) to play for. I love these girls.”

Motivation

After Brewster lost the 2B state title game to Reardan last season, its players set a goal to play for and win a championship this year, and they didn’t let any obstacles — including a move up into the 1A ranks — stand in their way. They didn’t look too far ahead, stayed focused on their goal and maintained a steely demeanor every time they stepped onto the court.

“It was hard to get that second-place finish out of our heads,” Hammons said. “But from the first day of practice, we always had our eye on the goal.”

New coach, no problem

A familiar face took over the team’s head coaching job before this season began. Roger Boesel, who was a member of the Bears’ state title-winning teams in the 1970s, instituted a series of fundamental tweaks in order to push the tempo and make sure that the Bears’ opponents were on the defensive at all times.

“I wanted us to play a more aggressive, man-to-man defense, and push the ball a lot harder,” Boesel said. “I remember how they felt (after losing to Reardan) last year, and I wanted to maybe add another twist. They bought into it.”

His changes took advantage of the players’s strengths perfectly, but perhaps more importantly, Boesel was able to implement a smooth transition to his style of coaching that every one of his players accepted and embraced right away.

“(Things were) a little different from last year, but (the transition) was pretty easy,” Hammons said. “I had (already) known who Roger was, so that helped. We were excited to have him because he knows so much about the game, and we were willing to learn.”