It was the opening day of the NCAA Tournament and Pearson Carmichael had just finished up a workout at Boss Sports Performance in Bend. Back in his hometown and at the gym where he spent so many hours practicing over the years, he was keeping skills sharp.

After all, he is starting for a major college basketball program now.

What started as a sure-fire redshirt season for the 6-foot-7 guard who was a two-time Class 5A Player of the Year and delivered Summit High its first state basketball title last March, ended with him cracking the rotation and starting the final nine games of the regular season for Boise State.

“It’s been a dream come true,” Carmichael said. “I’ve been dreaming of starting in college forever.”

In 19 games played this season, Carmichael averaged 15 minutes, 6.2 points and 2.6 rebounds per game. In the nine games he started, Boise State won seven and reached the championship of the Mountain West Conference tournament.

The Broncos (24-10) just missed out on reaching the NCAA Tournament and will play George Washington in the College Basketball Crown — a new 16-team postseason tournament — in Las Vegas on March 31.

It is easy to see the parallels between Carmichaels’s early rise up the ranks at Boise State and the rise he had as an underclassman at Summit.

Back in 2022, Carmichael began the season with a tiny role, picking up scrap minutes here and there late in games. By the end of the year, he had carved out a prominent role off the bench, playing big-time minutes on the Storm’s run to their first state championship game berth. During that year’s tournament at the Chiles Center, the sophomore received his first Division-1 offer.

But rising up the ranks at Boise State proved to be a much greater challenge than breaking into the Summit lineup a few years ago.

The experienced returning Boise State players like Tyson Degenhart made sure that the incoming freshman was aware that he wasn’t going against Redmond, Mountain View and Wilsonville anymore. For the first two months during the summer, he was getting beaten on the basketball court in ways he hadn’t been before.

“I could not stop him,” Carmichael said of Degenhart, Boise State’s all-time leading scorer. “He could do whatever he wanted. No matter how hard I pushed him or fouled him, the ball ended up in the hoop.”

“The physicality, some of the terms and words they use for different defenses and offenses is all a little more mature,” Carmichael added. “It took me a while to get used to it. That is part of the reason I was redshirting for the first part of the season.”

For the first 18 games of the season at Boise State, Carmichael was riding the bench. Even though in a red-shirt season no playing time was expected, it wasn’t something that he was used to doing. He rarely, if ever, left the court the past two seasons at Summit.

“I wasn’t all there,” Carmichael said. “I tried to make the most of those 18 games. I tried to make my redshirt season my best season … I’ve never really sat in my life. It was hard to overcome, but eventually I did.”

A day before Boise State’s 15th game of the season against UNLV, Carmichael was called into head coach Leon Rice’s office, thinking he had done something wrong. Instead, Rice told him that he had been praying for a reason to burn his redshirt season and get him on the court. Turns out, all it took was RJ Keene II breaking his nose the game prior for Carmichael to make his college debut.

He wasn’t anticipating playing much. A couple minutes here or there. Against UNLV on Jan. 7, Carmichael was the first player off the bench, scoring eight points while knocking down two 3-pointers in 18 minutes of action in a 81-59 win.

“I was proud of myself,” Carmichael said. “I didn’t think I was going to do all that.”

Carmichael became a fixture in the rotation the next nine games. In those nine games, Boise State went 5-4. With its season hanging in the balance and needing a spark offensively, Rice turned to Carmichael to start against one of the MWC’s top teams — New Mexico.

“It really hit me that it is really time to go,” Carmicheal said. “I have a whole city on my back, kinda. I want to prove to everyone that I’m a small-town kid and ready to go kill it out there. I felt like I definitely did that in the first game.”

The first start could not have gone better.

He erupted for 21 points, including four 3-pointers, and a four-point play that sent the crowd of over 11,000 fans at ExtraMile Arena into a frenzy. Boise State won the crucial game over New Mexico (86-78) and Carmichael was named the conference’s Freshman of the Week.

“I like to rise up to the big occasion,” Carmichael said. “Obviously I didn’t think I was going to score 21. That four-point play was probably my proudest moment ever. I’m going to tell my kids about that one for sure.

“I’m slapping my chest,” Carmichael continued. “The crowd was going crazy, my coaches and teammates were hyped, that is where I truly felt the ‘I made it’ moment.’”