A special season for Iowa Valley boys’ basketball

CEDAR RAPIDS — They won’t play the ‘What if?’ game. Refuse to play that card.

That’s not totally true, honestly.

Brody Ward admits the four losses his Iowa Valley Tigers have been handed this season kind of naw at him. Three were by a single point, the other by six in a game IV led by six after three quarters.

So close to being undefeated. So close.

“I’m not going to lie, that has crossed my mind a lot,” the senior all-state guard said. “Those three one-point losses I have thought about a lot. I’ve always thought ‘What could I have done better? What could we have strategized for? What we could have done better?’

“But at the end of the day, we’ve had the best season in probably our school’s history. We’ve just been great this year on both ends of the court. So I couldn’t ask for a better season.”

He’s not exaggerating when he speaks about best ever. Iowa Valley goes into its Class 1A district opener Monday night against Sigourney with a 17-4 record.

Head coach Randy Carney believes the school record for most wins in a season is 18. Iowa Valley rolled to the East Division championship in the South Iowa Cedar League, its first conference title in boys’ basketball since 1966.

The Tigers finished a game behind West Division winner Montezuma for overall SICL superiority. The aforementioned six-point loss was to the Braves.

The one-pointers were to Belle Plaine, Lynnville-Sully and Class 3A Vinton-Shellsburg. Anyway you dissect it, the 2021-22 season has been a great one in Marengo.

“Last year was kind of a turnaround season for us,” Carney said. “We hadn’t been very good prior to that. But one of the things that happened to us last year was when we played the good teams, we could kind of go into a fetal position and just get beat up. That was a focus this year. Play every minute like it’s your last, and they’ve done that frankly and more.”

Iowa Valley was 12-8 last season. Ward was a third-team 1A all-state pick by the Iowa Professional Sports Writers Association after averaging 23 points a game.

His scoring is down a tick this season (20.7), but his assists, rebounds and other ancillary numbers are up. So are the wins for Iowa Valley, and those two things are not a coincidence.

“He really took everything onto his shoulders last year,” Carney said. “And there are still a lot of times where we’ll put it on Brody’s shoulders. He makes us go. But his assist numbers are up, and he has really made Peyton Loffer a second scoring option for us.

“Instead of forcing things this year, he has really been dropping the ball off, making another cut to get open, waiting for another one of our guys to get open. He has just done a really nice job. Brody is really a complete player. He has played at both ends this year.“

Loffer is a senior guard averaging 15.5 points. Junior guard Evan Kearney is at 8.8

Six-foot-5 freshman Caleb Haack has played beyond his young years and varsity inexperience, providing a legit post presence. He averages 11.5 points and 6.3 rebounds.

He is a cousin of former Iowa Hawkeyes star Jarrod Uthoff. While Carney won’t throw that kind of comparison out there, he said he anticipates Haack will be a tremendous high school player by the time he’s done.

Iowa Valley was given zero favors when it comes to the postseason. The Tigers are in a stacked District 10 that includes defending 1A state champ Montezuma (17-4).

Despite its record, IV actually is a fourth seed in the district, behind third-seeded Montezuma, second-seeded WACO (17-4) and top-seeded New London (18-2). Thus the first district game for the Tigers is no pushover, as Sigourney is a respectable 13-8.

But these guys have enjoyed this special ride this season and are in zero hurry to have it stop.

“Going into the season, a lot of people thought that we were going to be this big offensive team and lead the conference in all offensive categories,” Ward said. “But it’s really been our defense. Our defense has won us a lot of games. We started the year off slow on offense. No one could really score. Plays just weren’t working. But our defense won us games.”

“It’s frustrating to have four losses by single digits and three of them by one,” Carney said. “But it also gives you a little bit of solace that we’re pretty sure we’ll be in the game regardless of who we play. Like a lot of teams, we want to get it to the fourth quarter with a chance to win, and we’ve certainly done that. They’ve done everything they can do. The guys on the team have played together and they’ve played hard. As a coach, I don’t know if you can ask for much more than that.”

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