Boys’ basketball notebook: MFL MarMac’s Eric Dettbarn notches 500th victory

CEDAR RAPIDS — You accumulate a lot of good memories when you’ve been a head basketball coach for almost four decades.

In Eric Dettbarn’s case, there are the six state tournament appearances he and his MFL MarMac teams have made. Especially the trip in 2012 because his son, Dalton, was on the squad.

“It was a blessing to be able to coach my son,” Dettbarn said.

Then there was that time back in the early 1990s when he and his wife, Andy, hosted legendary college coach Roy Williams for supper. Dettbarn was in his 20s, not very far into his career, and Williams was head coach at Kansas and recruiting MFL MarMac’s Raef LaFrentz.

“Andy and I lived in a little two-bedroom apartment in Monona, and he came up and ate with us in our apartment one time. Which was absolutely cool,” Dettbarn said. “I think we had ham and baked potatoes. Imagine my wife and myself sitting at a small little table in a little two-bedroom apartment eating supper with Roy Williams. We had to go pick him up in Prairie du Chien (Wis.) at the airport and bring him over.”

That’s something else, right? Just like Dettbarn’s career, which reached 500 wins Tuesday night when his team beat Postville.

He’s 500-315 in 38 seasons, all at MFL MarMac, the 49th coach in Iowa history to hit that half-a-thousand marker.

“Good kids, good parental support. Good support from the administration around you,” Dettbarn said. “You can’t have a good program if you don’t have people around you that don’t support you and aren’t willing to put in the time. I’ve had some really good kids throughout the years, good assistant coaches throughout the years, parents throughout the years.”

Dettbarn is a Marion native who attended Linn-Mar and graduated from Central City. He was hired for a fourth-grade teaching job at MFL right out of college at Upper Iowa, with the head high school varsity basketball and baseball positions added.

He coached baseball for 16 seasons.

“I toyed around a little bit with other jobs, interviewed at Center Point-Urbana one year, interviewed at Linn-Mar one year way back in the day,” he said. “But I think what kept me here is it has been a good place to raise my family. Really enjoyed the school district, great support all throughout my tenure here. Great place to raise my family, I’ve got a lot of friends here, and I enjoy the area.”

Dettbarn said he lost his first eight basketball games at MFL, with win number one coming over Garnavillo. That snapped a 44-game losing streak for the school.

The six state tournament appearances came in 1993, 1994, 1997, 2012, 2013 and last season. This season’s Bulldogs are 9-3 and appearing to hit their stride after a slow start caused by a football season that lasted into mid-November and the Class 1A state final.

Brock Hackett and Wyatt Powell are guys just beginning to play again after incurring injuries during football.

“I never realized until this year that there is a football hangover,” Dettbarn said. “There is a lot of truth to that. A lot of times you hear that, coaches saying ‘Yeah, we’re still in football mode.’ Whatever. But I actually have experienced that for the first time this year.”

Around the hoop

* The River Valley Conference will hold its second boys’ basketball shootout Saturday at Maquoketa. The eight-game event features 16 of the league’s 17 teams competing in cross-division encounters.

It begins at 9:30 a.m. when Anamosa and North Cedar play. Camanche and Durant follow at 11, with Dyersville Beckman and Tipton tipping off at 12:30 p.m.

Then it’s Bellevue and Mid-Prairie at 2 p.m., Northeast and West Liberty at 3:30, Cascade and Wilton at 5, and Monticello and Iowa City Regina in the marquee game at 6:30. Maquoketa hosts West Branch in the finale at 7:30.

* Linn-Mar’s Davis Kern is the Metro’s leading scorer. The 6-foot-8 junior, a Division I college recruit, was averaging 21.5 points per game through Thursday.

The rest of the top five scorers are Cedar Rapids Prairie’s Reid Burkle (16.8 ppg), Cedar Rapids Kennedy’s Trey McKowen (14.8), Cedar Rapids Jefferson’s Avonus Hodges (14.0), and Cedar Rapids Washington’s J.J. Willis and Marion’s Kylar Whitman (13.4 each).

Cedar Rapids Xavier’s Tyler Netolicky is the Metro’s top rebounder, averaging 10.7 per game.

* The Iowa High School Athletic Association decided not to compile team rankings this week because of the small amount of games played last week due to consistently poor weather. The IHSAA will come out with new rankings Monday.

Comments: (319)-398-8258, jeff.johnson@thegazette.com