A new uniform number working great for Iowa City West’s Jack McCaffery

IOWA CITY - You could swear that was Jack McCaffery scoring all those points out there Thursday night for the Iowa City West boys’ basketball team.

It sure looked like the 6-foot-8 senior forward, the youngest son of University of Iowa men’s basketball head coach Fran McCaffery. The Butler University signee had a nice inside-outside game offensively going in West’s 91-55 win over Cedar Rapids Washington.

He hit a couple of 3-pointers, had a flying slam dunk off transition, hit a couple of fadeaway mid-range jumpers. But this was a kid wearing uniform number 52 doing this damage: specifically 29 points and 12 rebounds while playing just a very little bit of the fourth quarter.

Jack McCaffery has proudly worn No. 22 in his four-year varsity career for West, the same jersey number his brother Patrick wore for the Trojans before doing the same at Iowa and now Butler. So who was this kid?

“I lost my 22 jersey,” Jack McCaffery said with a smile. “And I had 40 points (wearing 52). I’m kind of a superstitious guy. Then I had 38 against City wearing it (again). So I think I’m just going to stick with it.”

Hey, why the heck not. Mom, Margaret, wore No. 52 in high school and at Notre Dame back in the day.

Jack McCaffery did eventually find his 22 home jersey. He never lost his road green one, so he’s been that number for each game away from the West High gym.

Whichever jersey number he ultimately wears, he knows he’s gonna need to produce for a West team that improved to 5-2 with a win here that was literally start to finish. The Trojans scored the first seven points and eventually the game clock started running uninterrupted in the second half because West was 35 points ahead.

“I think that’s something that I kind of struggled with early. Putting a little too much pressure on myself to kind of think that I’m really going to need to play well if we’re going to win,” said McCaffery, who went into Thursday averaging just under 25 points per game. “I think these guys can step up, and it’s going to help me. It was something I had to do the other night against City High. I know I’m going to have to play well for us to win. But it’s not really too much pressure. It’s something I’ve worked for. It’s fine.

“But, yeah, I do need to relax a little more.”

Hall of fame Trojans coach Steve Bergman put his troops (and they were treated like troops) through some brutally tough practices over winter break. Just about everyone other than McCaffery was on a West football team that played its way into the state playoffs.

Those boys still are getting their hoops skills back up to snuff.

“We’ve got eight of our top nine guys who were football players, and I’ve never had it before, so it’s different,” Bergman said. “We’ve just got to keep plugging along. They worked really hard over Christmas break. We had kind of a boot camp, and I thought they kind of bought in.”

“Two three-hour practices back to back. The next day was two and a half. A lot of time spent on the defensive end,” McCaffery said. “I think that’s really our main focus. And then our assist-to-turnover ratio is horrible. We had way too many turnovers before break, and a problem has been our lack of assists, I think, too. Obviously I missed a couple of shots tonight, but we’ve really struggled inside this year. Just little things like that in our offense.

“I think those guys just coming off football was a big thing. Like they weren’t really into the flow, yet. But they’re good players, and we’ll be fine.”

Precocious-looking freshman Trae Fields of Washington actually led everyone Thursday night in scoring with 33 points. The kid is small, hasn’t grown into his body, yet, and was without equally talented freshman teammate Halbert Jackson (out for another game for personal reasons) but has a good 3-point jump shot and an ability to get through the lane with a mean hesitation dribble move despite his miniature stature.

Again, if Washington (3-4) can keep the young skilled guys together for multiple years, the future could be very, very good.

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Iowa City West 91, Cedar Rapids Washington 55

AT IOWA CITY WEST

CEDAR RAPIDS WASHINGTON (55): John Moore 2-2 0-0 4, Brian Robertson 2-4 0-0 4, Preston Haefner 0-2 1-2 1, Will Rahe 1-9 0-0 3, Trae Fields 12-27 4-6 33, Javion Seals 1-2 0-0 2, Chuck Crawley 2-7 0-0 4, Zaccai Walters-Poage 2-2 0-1 4, Quinton Garner 0-0 0-0 0, Jalen Zieser 0-0 0-0 0, Nicholas Riley 0-0 0-0 0, Isaac Hotchkiss 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 22-55 5-9 55.

IOWA CITY WEST (91): Henry Elser 0-1 1-2 1, Jack McCaffery 11-18 2-4 29, JuJu Manson 3-5 1-1 7, Mason Goering 2-7 3-5 7, Ethan Headings 5-7 0-1 10, KingSton Swayzer 2-4 2-2 6, Jack Wallace 4-6 4-5 12, Colin Whitter 3-5 0-0 6, Jack Jensen-Fitzpatrick 2-3 0-0 5, Greg Ford 2-5 0-0 4, Ibrahim Musa 1-10-0 2, Jack O’Leary 0-1 0-0 0, Owen Harms 1-3 0-0 2. Totals 35-66 13-19 91.

Halftime - West 45, Washington 23. 3-point goals - Washington 5-21 (Rahe 1-5, Fields 5-12, Seals 0-1, Crawley 0-3), West 5-18 (Elser 0-1, McCaffery 5-9, Manson 0-1, Jensen-Fitzpatrick 1-2, Ford 0-1, Harms 0-2). Rebounds - Washington 25 (Robertson 7), West 42 (McCaffery 12). Total fouls - Washington 13, West 9. Fouled out - None. Turnovers - Washington 18, West 9.

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