After years in the basketball wilderness, exiled to the land of one and three win seasons, the Telluride Miners basketball team was, this weekend, just a few inches short of earning a ticket to the state tournament.

This season, they’d already proved their days of exile were over by winning their league and the district tournament.

But in the 2A West Regional playoffs against Paonia in Grand Junction Saturday, they hit a wall. The wall was 6-foot-6 inches tall, and the name of its pillars were Brad Todd and David Carney, Paonia’s towering stars. The wall had other posts that stood 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-3, named Dylan Legge and Riley Emmons. Paonia may as well have posted a sign at the top of the lane: No Trespassing.

Up against that wall, Telluride fell by just one point, 57-56, and was as close to winning as the width of a butterfly’s eyelash.

About the only thing Telluride could have done differently was worn platform shoes, or go in for leg extension surgery, or hang via gravity boots, to help them compete against the soaring Eagles.

Even at a severe height disadvantage — pygmies shooting darts at a giant — the Miners had a chance to win.

The Miners raged back from a 12 point deficit in the fourth quarter to pull within one, 55-54, with less than a minute remaining.

Then junior guard Michael Matthews drove the lane and dished to David Gerald, who fought through his defender to put the ball on the glass and put the Miners up by one. It looked like the Miners could be tourney-bound.

Paonia streaked down the court and fed the ball to Todd, who borrows his clothes off of the Bob’s Big Boy mascot in Lake Havasu, Ariz. The big boy muscled his way inside to make a lay-up and put Paonia up by one.

With six seconds left, Telluride still had a shot. Probably just one shot, but a shot — at winning the game, heading to the 2A final eight tournament in Pueblo.

Again Matthews penetrated, spun, elevated, and passed, this time to junior center Ian MacCracken, who took a step and went up for the lay-up.

But there was Carney, three inches taller than MacCracken and with a gravitational pull of his own that makes the moon wobble. He stepped up and swatted MacCracken’s shot, sealing the victory for Paonia.

Telluride’s scoring was balanced, as MacCracken and Carl Schroedl walked away with 17 each, and Matthews had 16. Paonia knew that Matthews is the engine that powers the Miners, and in the third quarter switched to a zone defense that concentrated on Matthews, keeping a defender always on him, then collapsing on him if he drove like a pack of hungry wolves.

In front of the 100 or so Telluride fans who traveled to Junction, plus the 350 who watched online at TellurideWebTV.com, it started off so promising for the Miners. Telluride flustered Paonia at first, jumping ahead 9-3. Paonia had to take a time out to regroup.

Then, in the first half, Telluride went cold, and entered the locker room shooting just 33 percent from the field. It fell behind 44-34 at the end of the third, then roared back, coming back in that quarter the way they’ve come back over the last three seasons, from floormats to the San Juan League’s force.

Next year, Telluride’s three highest scorers — Matthews, MacCracken, and Schroedl — are all coming back for their senior seasons. It won’t be easy, since the 2A San Juan League will expand to include Ouray and Ignacio, both solid teams, both capable of throwing up walls as Telluride tries again to go deep into the state playoffs.