Trey McKowen the hero as C.R. Kennedy edges Dubuque Senior

CEDAR RAPIDS - Those Cedar Rapids Kennedy basketball teams that piled up points at a high rate and smoked every opponent the last couple of years? This isn’t them.

These Cougars have some inexperience, are still learning how to bring it from start to finish. But they have talent.

And they have Trey McKowen, which has been good enough to pull out some close wins in the past week.

McKowen’s pull-up jump shot from about 15 feet with 3 seconds left gave Kennedy a 52-50 win over Dubuque Senior in a matchup of top-10 teams in Class 4A. Kennedy came in ranked fourth, Senior 10th.

A senior guard and Upper Iowa signee, McKowen previously made the game’s biggest defensive play, poking the ball away from a dribbling Senior player from behind to create a turnover with under 20 seconds left, setting up his last shot. McKowen scored the first five points in overtime last Saturday to help Kennedy (7-2) get a win over No. 5 Johnston.

“Last year and the year before, we blew 90 percent of our opponents out,” said McKowen, who had a game-high 23 points, 17 in the second half and nine in the fourth quarter. “But this year, we’re playing a lot of close games, and, honestly, it’s more fun. Definitely harder on the heart, though.”

On Kennedy’s final offensive play (view final shot here), McKowen took the ball from out near the half-court line, penetrated to the right side, didn’t find any room, so pulled up and nailed a shot from just to the right of the elbow. Senior (6-2) did not even get a shot off after calling timeout following McKowen’s winner.

“I was going to get the ball and try and get downhill,” McKowen said. “He cut me off, so I stepped back. Just made a read. I work on that shot all the time, so it felt good, yeah.”

“In the timeout, we kind of talked about what actions were working, what we kind of wanted to get,” said Kennedy Coach Jon McKowen. “We shot it a little early, but they brought a double (team). We wanted to wait a little bit longer, but we had to counter what they did. He just got to a good spot, thought he got to a good space. He makes that shot at a high rate. I thought we had really good rebounding position, too, which means his teammates knew he was going to take that shot also.”

Kennedy scored the first nine points of this game, only to see Senior get the next nine. It remained very tight the rest of the way.

Forward Tevin Schultz led Senior with 20 points, hitting back-to-back 3-pointers to knot things at 48 with 2:20 to go. His pair of free throws gave the Rams a 50-48 edge with 44.4 seconds left, with McKowen re-tying it with two free throws with 21.3 to go.

“I just thought we were connected at the end, those last couple possessions,” Coach McKowen said. ”We’re a little bit of a roller coaster right now. There are some really good moments, we started the game great tonight, guarded their action. They are a true inside-out team, which is different. Most people are kind of guard oriented. I thought our first five possessions were really good, then they stuck us on some. We weren’t jumping to the ball and our ball possession wasn’t good. We kind of let up a little bit.

“It’s just understanding the intensity we have to have for 32 minutes.”

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AT CEDAR RAPIDS KENNEDY

DUBUQUE SENIOR (50): Michael Powers 0-1 0-0 0, Tevin Schultz 7-11 2-2 20, Drake Medinger 3-10 2-2 10, Cooper Porter 0-9 0-0 0, Mahdi Al-Atabi 1-6 0-0 2, Barrett Reed 1-1 0-0 3, Makyael Hall 3-4 0-0 6, Drew Francois 4-6 1-3 9, Ben Potts 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 19-48 5-7 50.

C.R. KENNEDY (52): Reuben Schlaak 4-6 1-1 11, Landon Deiters 2-2 0-0 4, Pierce McCrary 0-3 0-0 0, Jaxson Bean 0-1 0-0 0, Trey McKowen 8-16 7-8 23, Sharief Thomas 2-10 0-0 6, Justin Powell 2-5 0-0 6, Deacon Kucera 1-3 0-0 2, Carter Cook 0-0 0-0 0, Jacob Doyle 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 19-46 8-9 52.

Halftime - Kennedy 27, Senior 26. 3-point goals - Senior 7-22 (Schultz 4-4, Medinger 2-8, Porter 0-6, Al-Atabi 0-3, Reed 1-1), Kennedy 6-19 (Schlaak 2-3, McCrary 0-2, McKowen 0-1, Thomas 2-7, Powell 2-4, Kucera 0-2). Rebounds - Senior 30 (Schultz, Medinger 7), Kennedy 27 (Deiters 7). Total fouls - Senior 13, Kennedy 7. Fouled out - None. Turnovers - Senior 12, Kennedy 10.

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