Marion rebounds, responds with 70-61 win over Cedar Rapids Washington

MARION — You have essentially a brand new varsity boys’ basketball team and get rolled in your season opener.

How do you respond?

With a winning performance if you were the Marion Wolves, who took the lead midway through the first quarter, held off a second-half rally and beat Cedar Rapids Washington, 70-61, Saturday afternoon.

“Super proud of our guys. We grew so much today,” said Marion Coach Pete Messerli. “Each day in practice we are growing, each game is a chance for guys to come along as a team. We’re so inexperienced from a varsity basketball standpoint that we’re going to improve each night.”

Especially this night (or day).

Marion lost the guts of a team that qualified for the state tournament in Class 3A two straight years. There was graduation, including to Brayson Laube, the school’s all-time leading scorer, another starter transferred to a school out of state to concentrate on baseball, another decided not to go out this season.

Guard Jordan Fischer is the only Wolves player back who was a starter, let alone who played much. He had four 3-pointers and 18 points here.

“I think we had a great week of practice,” Fischer said. “Everyone bought in this week, we all came ready to work. We wanted to get better, we wanted to learn. We learned from a tough game, Kennedy is a great team, obviously are going to beat a lot of teams this year. So it was really good to play them early on and learn ... To kind of knock some sense into you a little bit.”

Cedar Rapids Kennedy destroyed Marion, 81-32, Tuesday night, but the Cougars are going to do that kind of thing to a lot of teams this season.

“We got thrown into the fire pretty heavy on Tuesday against maybe the best team in the state,” Messerli said. “But today we competed hard, we moved the ball well, we played through a little adversity and kept going.”

Marion hit 8 of 15 treys in the first half to build a 40-32 lead and ended 12 of 25 from beyond the arc, shooting 53 percent from the field overall. Junior guard Austin Goodrich added 13 points and center Kylar Whitman 12 points and 11 rebounds for the Wolves.

Landyn Mitvalsky had 15 points to lead Washington (2-1), which won games earlier in the week against Mount Pleasant and Des Moines East. The Warriors are in exactly the same inexperienced boat as Marion, with four new starters and everyone but senior forward J’Quari Willis (who had 13 points here) not having much previous varsity playing time.

“We’ve got a lot of seniors, but we’ve got a lot of inexperience when it comes to playing at the varsity level and stuff,” said Washington Coach Justin Decker. “This one, I think we’re going to learn a lot. Learn a lot from the film. Get a lot out of it. We’re going to be a work in progress. You lose 10 seniors and two kids transfer, the road is going to be bumpy. But I just want these guys to play hard, get better and enjoy the year.”

Decker returned to the team this week after missing the opening couple of weeks of practice and some time before that under a medical leave of absence. Head sophomore coach Nate Garner led the program through the preseason.

“I was fortunate to have a good coaching staff that stepped in,” Decker said. “I don’t think we missed a beat at all.”

Marion 70, Cedar Rapids Washington 61

AT MARION

CEDAR RAPIDS WASHINGTON (61): David Fason 3-9 3-4 12, J’Quari Willis 5-15 2-3 13, Kwae China 4-10 1-3 9, Landyn Mitvalsky 3-7 7-11 15, Yealeseh Amah 2-5 4-6 9, Miles Lapointe 1-4 1-1 3, Monty Beard 0-0 0-0 0, Colton Eilers 0-2 0-0 0, William Rahe 0-1 0-0 0, Preston Haefner 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 18-52 18-28 70.

MARION (70): Grayson Kirsch 3-5 0-0 6, Kyler Whitman 5-11 2-2 12, Josh Noll 2-4 0-0 5, Jordan Fischer 7-13 0-0 18, Austin Goodrich 4-7 2-2 13, Tyler Farber 1-2 0-0 3, Jace Franck 1-4 2-2 5, Kaleb Diers 0-0 0-0 0, Jaryn Griffith 3-3 0-0 8, Brooks Coates 0-0 0-0 0, Logan Harris 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 26-49 6-6 70.

Halftime - Marion 40, Washington 32. 3-point goals - Washington 7-17 (Fason 3-4, Willis 1-2, China 0-2, Mitvalsky 2-4, Amah 1-3, Rahe 0-1), Marion 12-25 (Noll 1-2, Fischer 4-9, Goodrich 3-5, Farber 1-2, Franck 1-4, Griffith 2-2). Rebounds - Washington 27 (Willis 6), Marion 35 (Whitman 11). Total fouls - Washington 17, Marion 19. Fouled out - None. Turnovers - Washington 11, Marion 16.

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