Cedar Rapids Kennedy boys’ basketball team has a chance at redemption in state tournament

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Negative Nellys are out there ready to pounce. The naysayers, the I-told-you-so crowd.

They want to howl.

Cedar Rapids Kennedy’s boys’ basketball team isn’t oblivious to them. The Cougars went through last season undefeated and rarely challenged, a No. 1-ranked and seeded team that was stunned in a Class 4A state tournament quarterfinal by Pleasant Valley.

Kennedy went through this season undefeated and rarely challenged again. It’s No. 1 ranked, No. 1 seeded again in 4A for this week’s state tournament.

The eighth-seeded opponent this time around is Dallas Center-Grimes (20-3), a quarterfinal slated for Wednesday morning at 10:30. There will be Cougars doubters once more.

Prove it, they say. We intend to, says Kennedy.

“I mean, there’s always pressure,” said Kennedy guard Trey McKowen. “Pressure is privilege for us, honestly. We’ve earned that pressure, the right to have that pressure. And I think we just have to come out every day and perform.”

Play like you practice has been the mantra for this group. Kennedy Coach Jon McKowen said his team has practiced hard and with purpose virtually without fail all season, from the first one held in November to the 60-whatever it is up to now.

Kennedy (23-0) beat five teams in the regular season that finished in the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s final Class 4A top 10. It beat three teams that also are in this 4A state tournament field: West Des Moines Valley, Cedar Falls and Dubuque Senior.

It has beaten opponents by an average of 35.9 points and gives up just 42.0 points per game, tied for lowest in 4A. Those numbers are the byproduct of a scrambling pressure defense that creates turnovers and large runs.

“We’re just going to come out and play our game,” said Kennedy’s Joe Bean. “Do what we do best. Play defense.”

Bean transferred in this season from Cedar Rapids Xavier, where he was part of a team that played in the Class 3A state championship game last year. He doesn’t know the heartbreak most of his current teammates felt in Des Moines.

“It didn’t feel real,” Kennedy’s Micah Schlaak said of the 57-45 loss to PV. “I think we did an interview earlier in the season where I said we just have to take every game seriously. I go back to that. We have to take every single game seriously.”

“We just take every game one by one,” said Kennedy’s Cyrus Courtney. “You know, of course, everybody is going to have that in the back of their head. Of that loss we had last year. But if we play like we practice, we should be fine.”

Jon McKowen was asked what he could do to help relax his team, to have it play to its optimum capability. He said everyone will talk about last year but obviously not too much.

Use it as a learning lesson, as motivation.

“You try a bunch of different things. You talk through a lot of situations,” McKowen said. “But at the end of the day, they’ve kind of got to figure it out themselves a little bit. They’ve got to be able to control their emotions.”

A 57-55 substate final win last week over North Scott at Alliant Energy PowerHouse in Cedar Rapids should help. Kennedy scored the first 12 points of the game and seemed en route to yet another rout, but North Scott regrouped and actually had a two-point lead with a minute and a half to go.

The Cougars didn’t fold, tying it on a Trey McKowen jumper, then going ahead by two on a pair of Bean free throws with 4.6 seconds left. North Scott missed a potential game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer.

“That shot was in the air, and you could have gotten beat,” Coach McKowen said. “You start to appreciate every day a little bit more. You can talk about it, we’ve talked about it a lot, that every day in the postseason is a bonus. But now I think that you can really feel that it’s a bonus. Hopefully it relaxes us a little bit more. Last year when we played down there (in Des Moines), we were really tight, and things didn’t go well. So hopefully this year it’s fun and more enjoyment and being more relaxed.”

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about that (PV game),” Trey McKowen said. “You never want to feel that again, you know what I mean? There’s obviously going to be pressure. But I think that if we just come out and play like we know how to, like we play every other game, it’ll be good. We’ve got to perform like we do, and we’ll be fine.”

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