Not quite enough for Cedar Rapids Kennedy

DES MOINES – Those six little words. They're not dirty or anything, just really disheartening at their core.

It's because you know what they ultimately mean.

'We left it on the floor,” Cedar Rapids Kennedy Coach Jon McKowen said Wednesday night at Wells Fargo Arena.

Don't' get it wrong because leaving it on the floor is admirable, meaning the Cougars played as hard as they could in their Class 4A state tournament quarterfinal.

'We just didn't knock down shots,” McKowen continued, after Pleasant Valley ended Kennedy's season, 58-51. 'And we got a couple of bad bounces on rebounds … When you play good teams, those things make a big difference.”

Pleasant Valley's size (four starters 6-foot-5 and taller) and half-court approach won out over Kennedy's quickness and defensive pressure, but just barely. Kennedy (18-6) came back from 12 points down in the third quarter to take a 44-42 lead on a Cole Murdock 3-pointer with 4:13 left.

But made 3s were few and far between for the Cougars on this night. Pleasant Valley (22-2) made just enough plays on defense the rest of the way, all 12 of their free throws and eked it out.

'We knew, with their defensive pressure that they would make a run at some point in time,” said Pleasant Valley Coach Steve Hillman. 'We went up 12, and they switched up defenses, and we had a tough time reacting … I think they opened up a lead there, but then we settled down and went back to what we do. We got the ball around the rim and tried to use our size to help us.”

Normally a solid 3-point shooting team, Kennedy finished 3 of 20 from the arc. Its two best shooters, Murdock and Zach Daniels, went a combined 1 of 13, with second-leading scorer Daniels (averaging 12.9) not scoring at all.

A couple more shots drop, and it's a totally different outcome. Kennedy knew it.

'We usually shoot pretty well, but it was just an off day,” said Kennedy's Bryton Heisler.

That the Cougars still had a legit shot at a victory came in large part because of Heisler. The senior forward constantly was able to beat his slower defender on the drive, scoring a team-high 22 points.

'They weren't really able to stop me,” he said. 'Some shots weren't falling for us, so I just decided to take it.”

'That was the matchup tonight we were going to take advantage of,” McKowen said. 'Bryton did the most with it.”

Kennedy tried and tried to gets its full-court, trapping defense to be the ultimate factor, but Pleasant Valley handled it well enough. The Cougars had no answers for PV's trees.

Will Carius led the Spartans with 18 points, with Carter Milam adding 17. It was Milam's putback after a rebound caromed off a Kennedy player's hands that put Pleasant Valley ahead by three, 50-47, with 1:07 left.

Murdock missed a corresponding 3-pointer to tie, and Brendon Manning had an offensive-rebound shot blocked. The Spartans' free-throw line proclivity ended Kennedy's hopes from there.

'We just had to be strong with the ball,” Carius said. 'There were some times where we got ahead of ourselves sometimes, got a little too fast. We just had to calm down and be strong. They came to foul after that, and we knocked down our free throws.”

'We thought we were going to be able to get around them (defensively) and steal a lot of passes when they were throwing it inside,” Heisler said. 'I guess we weren't able to take enough of them away.”

It was a sudden and bitter ending for a Kennedy team that was playing its best basketball, by far, down the stretch. The Cougars saw their eight-game win streak stopped at the most inopportune time.

'We had some injuries early, went through a tough stretch defensively, and that was new to us. For a year and a half, we didn't go through that,” said McKowen, who has taken Kennedy to state in both of his seasons as head coach. 'But the kids battled. We had to start all over again in January. They stayed committed, worked hard in practice and our defense got really good at the end of the year … It's not easy to do. Rotating and ball pressure and pressing is not easy. It's a lot easier to run back and sit in a half-court defense. But when we do it right, it's pretty tough to beat. It gave us a chance to win every single night.”

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