Boulder’s boys basketball team faltered in the fourth quarter Tuesday, losing the lead and eventually its first league game of the season. It wasn’t a season-defining defeat in itself. Though, following a choppy start against Brighton on Thursday, there was danger it could spread into something worse. The kind of rough patch that has proven consequential for the Panthers, who’ve been so close to reaching the postseason in recent years, only to miss by the narrowest of margins.

Senior Cole Morrow handed in a rewrite. His 50-foot buzzer-beater at the end of the first quarter changed the complexion of Thursday’s game, and maybe more — time will tell — as the Panthers beat the Bulldogs, 83-70.

“You get in that flow-state and you feel like everything is going to go in,” said Morrow, who’s in the middle of the best scoring stretch of his career, now with 30-plus points in three of his past four games. “I know I have to be a leader for us. And my teammates give me fuel.”

With three weeks left in the regular season, Boulder’s latest win boosts both its postseason and league-title chances.

The Panthers (9-8, 6-1 6A/5A Rocky Mountain League), who haven’t reached the playoffs in four straight years, are currently in position to make 6A’s 40-team field. They came into the night ranked 34th.

Of course, they’d prefer the automatic bid given to league champs. With their second win of the season over No. 38 Brighton, they have a half-game lead in the standings over Riverdale Ridge (8-9, 5-1), which they beat by 21 last week. The last time they won a league title was in the Front Range League in 2015-16. “We have guys who’ve gone through the mud,” Boulder coach Matthew Smith said. “They finished 33rd (outside the previous years’ 32-team postseason field) and know how it feels. They finished 36th. The biggest thing we talked about all summer is we aren’t going to feel that way again. We’re going to control our destiny.”

Luck helps, too. But the Panthers promise Morrow’s bank-in from the other side of halfcourt on Thursday wasn’t that.

He’s now 3 of 4 from halfcourt this season, his coaches and teammates say. “We don’t practice it, but it’s just one of those things. When you get it in the right hands, it goes in,” Smith said. “When we know Cole has got it up, I’m already coming off the bench because I know he’s made it. That’s the confidence we have. And that’s the confidence these kids have.”

The Panthers still trailed by three after the latest ‘Morrow from Midcourt.’ But they took control a short while later.

Morrow hit six straight shots and the Panthers opened the second quarter on an 11-0 run, turning a slow start into a double-digit lead by halftime. The Bulldogs got as close as seven in the fourth but couldn’t stop Morrow or Lake Smith down the stretch. Smith added 15 of his 21 points after changing his shoes at the half. “We had energy and determination coming into this game,” Morrow said. “And hopefully that carries on for the rest of the season.”

Boulder is at Northglenn on Tuesday. In its first meeting of the season on Jan. 9, the Panthers beat the Norsemen 63-59 in overtime.