Flu-stricken Lohaus makes Southeast Polk sick

DES MOINES - Steve Bergman walked into the media room postgame Wednesday afternoon, accepted a cup of water and let out a big sigh.The Iowa City West boys' basketball coach was asked if that was how he felt."Oh, yeah," he replied. "We had a little drama today."It's dramatic when your leading scorer and the possible 2014 Iowa Mr. Basketball gets a bad case of the flu right before your team's opening game at the state tournament. It turned out not to be overly traumatic, though, and definitely not catastrophic.Lohaus played and played very well, scoring a game-high 22 points in a 69-51 Class 4A quarterfinal win over Southeast Polk."Yeah, I was a little sick last night. Didn't feel very good," Lohaus said. "But my mom and Sheila (Stiles), our trainer, did a really good job helping me to get hydrated and get a lot of rest."Lohaus didn't practice Tuesday and was late coming out pregame to the Wells Fargo Arena floor Wednesday. It was to conserve energy.But there was no doubt he would play. This is a kid who has played four years of varsity ball with a heart condition that forces him to come out of games sometimes and stick his face in a container of ice water to shock it back into rhythm."They would have had to kill me to not play in this game," he said, after making 9 of 14 shots from the field."Do you know him?" Bergman said. "The stuff he's played through in his life ... yeah, he was playing."A 17-0 run late in the first quarter and early in the second helped West (21-3) build a 29-14 lead that Southeast Polk (18-5) could never overcome. The Rams hung around, getting as close as five on a Nick Jeffries 3-pointer to begin the fourth quarter, but Lohaus and Nick Gallagher hit back-to-back daggers 3s that restored order."I thought we played pretty well overall," said freshman point guard Connor McCaffrey, West's second-leading scorer with 11 points. "I thought there were a couple stretches where we didn't ... But I thought we really 'D'ed up their top guys."Jeffries and Tucker Kamman each came in scoring 17 points a game for a Southeast Polk squad that lives and dies with its perimeter shooting but were held under their averages and went a combined 9 for 26 from the field. West, meanwhile, shot 59.5 percent from the field, getting something from everyone."We played good defense," Bergman said. "We said that was the key, and I thought we did a good job."The spree for three (consecutive state championships) is expected to get a much tougher test in Friday afternoon's semifinals, with Bettendorf (23-1) the opponent. It's a rematch of last year's title game.The presumption is Lohaus will be fully healthy by then. Not that the sick version was too bad."He played pretty good," Bergman said. "We had to spell him a little bit, but he played pretty well, and I think he'll be OK now. It's always a little drama when you don't have your all-stater at practice the day before and shoot-around in the morning. I'm happy for him. He played well.""Once I got my adrenaline going, I felt pretty good," Lohaus said. "A little tired, but not bad. My teammates did a really good job of helping me out. Just being there for me when I needed it."Here is the game boxscore:

ICW by

Jeff Johnson