Iowa City Regina’s Tate Wallace uses being on the Regals’ third-ranked boys’ basketball team as diversion from football recruiting

IOWA CITY - The court is a safe space right now for Tate Wallace. A sanctuary for the Iowa City Regina junior.

When he’s practicing or playing games with his basketball teammates, the reality of his other sports situation right now goes away.

It’s not that Wallace has any family drama or trauma going on in his life. Nothing like that.

It’s a really good thing, actually. The kid is being recruited for his football abilities at linebacker by seemingly every school and their mother.

There’s Arizona, West Virginia, Purdue and Kansas State. There’s Wisconsin, Minnesota, UNLV and some Mid-American Conference schools.

All of them want a piece of his time right now. It can get overwhelming.

“There’s a lot of difficulty. I feel like I’m on the phone with coaches almost every day,” Wallace said Thursday night after his Class 2A second-ranked Regals beat Dyersville Beckman, 62-41. “I feel like in the morning, throughout school, it’s working out for football for a little bit. But once get you get to the afternoon, it’s all basketball. This is the season I’m in, and I’ve always felt the season you are in is the most important. I’ve worked my butt off for basketball.”

Wallace leads Regina (18-1) in scoring at 17.1 points per game, shooting 65 percent from the field. Every shot the well-built forward has taken this season has been from two-point range, most of them from the low block and at the basket.

He has started all of Regina’s games, sans one, when he went to San Antonio, Texas, to play in the Navy All-American Bowl. The game featured many of the top junior players in the country.

“It was a great experience to play against the best players in the country,” he said. “It’s nice because at Regina you play small-Iowa football. I had kind of big eyes, but once I got there, I felt I was comfortable with my situation. I felt confident. It was a great time.”

Wallace said he’ll let the basketball season play itself out, then will start making official visits to schools. He hopes to then narrow down his considerable list and follow that up with a commitment by late April.

First things first, and that’s hopefully completing this hoops season with a state championship. Regina’s football team lost its Class 1A championship game in overtime.

This is a shot at redemption for a basketball team that has a ton of football players on it.

“The way football ended was terrible, but everything happens for a reason,” Wallace said. “We kind of took that into our basketball season. We started a week late because we were in the state championship football game. So we were already set back more than almost every team in 2A. Yeah, you’ve just got to take it over, focus on it, and once it gets to those big games, we’ve been in those big games. We’ve played games in the Dome, we played at the state basketball tournament my freshman year. We’re used to those big situations.”

Six-foot-9 sophomore center Ben Wade tied Wallace for high-scoring honors Thursday. Will Litton added 10 points, and he’s 6-5.

Regina has one more regular-season game remaining Friday night at Mid-Prairie. It’s a makeup of a scheduled game last week that was postponed because of high prevalence of sickness on the Regina team and in the school.

It was decided to cancel school this past Thursday and Friday because 40 percent of students were out sick, Wallace said. Regina crushed West Liberty upon its returned Tuesday night and is a top seed in its 2A district.

“No, no, no we’re not,” Regina Coach Paul Rundquist said, when asked if his team is where it needs to be with postseason play beginning for it next week. “Had you asked me last Tuesday, I might have said yes. We played well that Tuesday and the Friday before that. But those days off hurt us. Hurt our conditioning.”

Tayveon Burkhart led Beckman (11-10) with 13 points. The Blazers had a six-point lead late in the first quarter, but Regina went on a 10-0 run from there to take the lead and never looked back.

Beckman has fought injuries and illnesses this entire season, especially since the holiday break concluded.

“Been crazy,” Beckman Coach Michael Molony said. “It’s hard to tell the kids to keep believing when you start losing, and you’ve got teammates out, then you start getting selfish. Selfishness kills a team. That’s the biggest thing.”

AT IOWA CITY REGINA

DYERSVILLE BECKMAN (41): Brady Gogel 2-6 2-3 6, Jack Helle 1-2 1-4 3, Noah Kluesner 4-9 1-1 9, Tayveon Barnhart 4-15 2-4 13, Brenndan Engler 1-3 0-0 2, Aden Kruse 0-0 1-2 1, Andrew Schlarmann 1-2 0-0 2, Jack Wessels 1-2 0-0 3, Luke Kruse 0-1 2-2 2, Hayden Heisler 0-0 0-0 0, Henry Milbert 0-0 0-0 0, Reed Bockenstedt 0-0 0-0 0, Steffen Goerdt 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 14-40 9-16 41.

IOWA CITY REGINA (62): Tate Wallace 6-8 4-6 16, Will Litton 4-7 0-0 10, Ben Wade 7-10 2-3 16, Miles Nuzback 3-6 2-2 9, Drew Greve 0-3 0-0 0, Emmett Burke 0-1 0-0 0, Jack O’Leary 5-7 0-0 11, Aiden Gaffey 0-0 0-0 0, Trey Streb 0-0 0-0 0, Jack Kaeding 0-0 0-0 0, Luke Klingeman 0-0 0-0 0, Corbin Daniel 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 25-43 8-11 62.

Halftime - Iowa City Regina 30, Dyersville Beckman 18. 3-point goals - Beckman 4-12 (Gogel 0-1, Kluesner 0-2, Barnhart 3-7, Engler 0-1, Wessels 1-1), Regina 4-13 (Litton 2-2, Nuzback 1-3, D. Greve 0-2, Burke 0-1, O’Leary 1-3, Daniel 0-1). Rebounds - Beckman 17 (Kruse 5), Regina 30 (Wade 7). Total fouls - Beckman 12, Regina 16. Fouled out - None. Turnovers - Beckman 8, Regina 11.

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