Battle of top-4 teams goes Linn-Mar’s way over Cedar Rapids Kennedy

CEDAR RAPIDS - This was about Davis Kern, as it almost always is for the Linn-Mar boys’ basketball team.

But this also was about Tyler Hilton. And Mason Matson.

Hilton had a double-double of 17 points and 14 rebounds, and Matson nailed a go-ahead corner trey with 1:01 left that helped lift Class 4A No. 4 Linn-Mar over No. 3 Cedar Rapids Kennedy in a highly anticipated game Tuesday night at Kennedy that did not disappoint.

Matson scored 16 points for the Lions (14-2), including making four 3s. The most significant one gave Linn-Mar a 65-62 lead. After a couple of Kennedy offensive misses, Matson added a pair of free throws for a 67-62 edge.

“We run some side-ball screen with the big on me,” Matson said. “I’ve been hitting those behind-the-back, step-back 3s. Right when I let it go, I felt ‘Oh, that one’s in.’

“After seeing the first one not go in tonight, you’ve just got to have a shooter’s mentality. They ended up falling.”

Linn-Mar trailed much of the first half but responded and took a 33-32 halftime lead on a Matson corner trey off an inbounds pass. The Lions built as much as a nine-point lead at the beginning of the second half, with the 6-foot-7 Hilton wandering outside and hitting a 3-pointer for a 41-32 edge.

All-state forward and South Dakota State signee Kern did damage in the game, as he always does, with 17 points, five under his per-game average, actually, but other Lions really, really stepped up.

“It’s a big win,” Hilton said. “They were ranked ahead of us coming into the game, but we knew we were the better team. It was just fuel. We came out with the dub.”

“That’s a high-level game,” Linn-Mar Coach Chris Robertson said. “I told them before the game ‘You’ve got the Xs and Os, and all that stuff, but you’re going to have to play really, really hard for 32 minutes, because they are going to.’ They did, and I thought we did. They go on runs, and that’s when you’ve got to take a deep breath. We’ve got a pretty experienced group that can kind of catch their breath and have a good possession.”

Linn-Mar defensively made Kennedy all-state guard Trey McKowen really work for everything he got offensively. McKowen had a game-high 24 points but was just 9 of 26 from the field. Landon Deiters was the only other double-figure scorer for Kennedy (13-3), with 10 points.

“We’re a little too much of a roller coaster right now,” Kennedy Coach Jon McKowen said. “We have really good moments, then we have moments with, like, brain lapses where we do things outside of character a little bit. Maybe get caught up in the moment, maybe do things a little bit too fast. We just need to find a little bit more consistency.”

Kennedy made Linn-Mar sweat until the final buzzer. A pair of missed Lions free throws were countered by a Pierce McCrary triple that brought the Cougars within 67-65 with 5.5 seconds left.

Then Kennedy forced a traveling turnover on the Linn-Mar inbounds pass, actually getting a chance to tie or win the game with a last shot. McKowen collected the inbounds pass, dribbled to the top of the arc, pump faked, and let go with a leaning 3-point attempt that was short off the front rim.

“We had some guys really step up tonight,” Robertson said.

“We knew it was going to be up and down,” Matson said. “You can’t get too high on the highs and too low on the lows.”

Linn-Mar gets another tough game Friday night at home against 10th-ranked Cedar Rapids Prairie. Kennedy will face No 5 Waukee Northwest in a road game Saturday.

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AT CEDAR RAPIDS KENNEDY

LINN-MAR (67): Payson Nietert 3-6 0-0 8, Tyler Hilton 6-9 4-6 17, Davis Kern 5-8 4-4 17, Mason Matson 5-8 2-3 16, Trey Wright 2-9 0-0 6, Max Robertson 0-1 0-0 0, Karson Rains 1-2 0-0 3. Totals 22-43 10-13 67.

CEDAR RAPIDS KENNEDY (65): Pierce McCrary 3-3 1-2 9, Reuben Schlaak 1-4 2-2 5, Landon Deiters 4-8 0-0 10, Jaxson Bean 1-4 0-0 3, Trey McKowen 9-26 3-3 24, Sharief Thomas 2-5 0-0 6, Deacon Kucera 4-6 0-0 8, Justin Powell 0-3 0-0 0, Jacob Doyle 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 24-59 6-7 65.

Halftime - Linn-Mar 33, Kennedy 32. 3-point goals - Linn-Mar 13-24 (Nietert 2-5, Hilton 1-1, Kern 3-6, Matson 4-5, Wright 2-4, Robertson 0-1, Rains 1-2), Kennedy 11-25 (McCrary 2-2, Schlaak 1-3, Deiters 2-5, Bean 1-1, McKowen 3-7, Thomas 2-4, Kucera 0-1, Powell 0-2). Rebounds - Linn-Mar 27 (Hilton 14), Kennedy 26 (Kucera 7). Total fouls - Linn-Mar 9, Kennedy 16. Fouled out - None. Flopping warning - Linn-Mar. Turnovers - Linn-Mar 15, Kennedy 7.

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