Momentum from a magical postseason run last season carries over for Coe

CEDAR RAPIDS - There was no real celebration from anyone. No overt jubilation.

Coe’s men’s basketball team discarded Cornell, 73-53, Wednesday night at Kohawk Arena. Normally a win over a nearby rival would elicit some sort of emotion but not here.

This seemed to be just a business approach deal by Coe’s players. An expected result by an expected margin.

“I think we’re really coming together on the defensive side of the ball,” said Coe’s T.J. Schnurr. “I think offensively we’ve got a lot of guys who on any given night can have a great game. Defensively when we figure it out, I think we’re a team to beat.”

“We think we can compete with anybody. That’s what we’re working for,” said Coe’s Bennett Sherry, who had a career-high 30 points in this aforementioned game. “But we’re just worried about the next one. You have to keep it one game at a time. But we think we can beat anybody.”

The Kohawks have beaten just about everybody so far. They are 10-1, including a 20-point win in mid-November over North Park (Ill.), which was ranked at the time and coming off a season in which it made it to NCAA Division III’s national sweet 16.

Coe is 4-0 in the American Rivers Conference, including an overtime win last Saturday at Central, which was the preseason ARC favorite. This is a good ballclub.

“The chemistry is really, really good with this team,” said Coe Coach Bryan Martin, in his 12th season leading the program. “Every day in practice, we’re all just out there trying to get better and make each other better. There has been no drama, it has just been one focus, one vision. These guys believe that we can do some special things this year.”

Coe did something special last season when it qualified for the NCAA D-III tournament. The Kohawks were under .500, having to win their final two regular-season games just to qualify for the ARC tournament.

Then they won three straight tourney games on the road to get the league’s automatic bid to Division III’s version of the Big Dance. Coe hung with top-seeded Washington (Mo.) in its national tournament game, trailing by four points at halftime before losing 69-48.

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“I think last year was huge, just from the standpoint of getting that experience,” said Schnurr, a 6-foot-6 senior forward from Algona Garrigan, who leads Coe in scoring (18.0 points per game) and rebounds (7.0 per game). “We always knew we could do it, but actually going out there and winning the conference tournament, proving that we can play and now proving that last year wasn’t a fluke, I think it’s a big thing in our mind. To succeed last year, some people might have considered it a Cinderella story, but we want to prove that we can actually sustain that success.”

Schnurr is one of three returning starters, joining Sherry and senior guard Cael Schmitt. A former Dubuque Wahlert prep, Schmitt also averages 18 points per game and runs Coe’s offense with aplomb at the point.

A 6-6 junior from Wisconsin, Sherry averages 14.6 points. Other guys in Coe’s regular playing rotation include former Linn-Mar preps John Steffen and Brady Klahn and former Cedar Rapids Xavier prep Tre McCrary.

“It felt like we really found ourselves as a team last year at the end of the year,” Sherry said. “We started filling into our roles, the chemistry was rolling. We’ve kind of carried that over into this year. (The NCAA tournament) was an awesome experience.

“When you get bonded like that through a tournament run, you bring most guys back, with all that experience, it really just rubs off on the younger guys, too. You just keep rolling.”

Martin warned that there are still a ton of games yet to be played. Coe hosts North Central University of Minnesota in its final pre-holiday game Saturday afternoon at 4, then it’s a couple of weeks off.

But the coach likes where this group is at right now.

“We’ve scheduled pretty tough non-conference,” he said. “We went on the road a little bit. We’ve seen a lot of things early in the first half of this season, both in non-conference and conference play. We’ve handled a lot of things in a positive way. The key is to keep showing up at practice and finding ways to get better. It’s a long season, and we’ve only played four out of 16 conference games. We’ve got a long way to go.”

“Ultimate goal is to get back to where we were last year and make some noise,” Schnurr said. “Not just be a one-and-done team. Actually get there (to NCAAs) and win some games.”

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