Boys’ basketball notebook: Youthful Vinton-Shellsburg surging in the early going

CEDAR RAPIDS - There’s another week to go before the holiday break, but Vinton-Shellsburg’s boys’ basketball team already has more wins than it did last season.

More wins than it did the season before that. And the season before that.

The Vikings won their home opener Tuesday night against Independence, 74-57. They have a 4-0 record.

V-S was just 1-21 a season ago. It was 3-19 in 2022-23 and 2021-22.

This is a turnaround, a sudden turnaround. Here’s the kicker: there are no seniors on the roster.

“I’d say our strength is we’re very, very unselfish,” said head coach A.J. Wygle. “The last two years we’ve averaged 25 turnovers a game, this year we’re averaging 11. We were averaging 12 assists per game, and now it’s 20. Again, it’s just playing unselfish, understanding what it takes to win and guys buying into their roles. We have a number of guys who can score. Then we’ve got guys who don’t necessarily score, but they rebound and do those things.”

Wygle is in his first season leading the program. A 2003 Vinton-Shellsburg grad, he has been a varsity assistant and freshman-sophomore coach prior to moving up a chair on the sideline.

Former head coach Joe Johnson, who led the Vikings to an undefeated regular season and state tournament appearance in 2013, is an assistant for Wygle, as is Kevin Patterson, who has helped out the program for years.

“It’s easier when I have two assistant coaches: one that I mentored under and another that has been coaching probably as long as I’ve been alive,” Wygle said. “They’ve both coached for 60-some years (combined). That makes it a little easier. But I will tell you, it’s good to get the season started and doing all the ordering, the admin, the scheduling. I’m a basketball junkie, so if I could just coach ... I need a secretary at this point.”

Vinton-Shellsburg has four players who are averaging double figures in points in the very early going, led by sophomore swingman Colt Koeppen, who is at 16.5 points coming off the bench. Then it’s sophomore guard Cade Sutton at 11.5, junior guard Jacoby Johnson (Joe’s son) at 11.0 and junior guard Jack Blais at 10.8.

The starting lineup consists of two juniors (Johnson, Blais and Kaden Fisher) and three sophomores (Sutton and Jakob Becker). Vinton-Shellsburg is scheduled to play Friday night at Center Point-Urbana.

Its last winning season came in 2016-17 (13-10).

“I got the job in May, and we played 25 games this summer, had 15 workouts,” Wygle said. “Just implementing a lot of this stuff that I want to do. Just buy in. Building the relationships with the players and making sure they know, like any good coach would, like Joe Johnson always taught me originally. It’s about if you get a kid to play for you, you don’t need him to score 30, you need a kid that will bust it and get after it.”

Around the hoop

– North Linn’s home win streak is at 120 consecutive games after a 54-50 win Tuesday night over Alburnett. That is a state record.

The last loss at home for the school came Dec. 15, 2014 against Elkader Central (53-46). Interestingly NL also loss the previous game, also at home, to Easton Valley.

North Linn has played in a record seven-consecutive state championship games, winning three. It has been a state qualifier eight straight years.

The Lynx’s overall record the past nine seasons is 234-9. New head coach Travis Griffith is 3-0 in his career.

The longtime assistant (and the school’s head baseball coach) took over for Mike Hilmer, when the latter left over the summer to take the superintendent’s job at Bellevue.

– Iowa City West senior Jack McCaffery scored 39 points in his team’s 87-41 win Tuesday night at home over Burlington. McCaffery is a Butler University signee, where his brother, Patrick, plays and brother, Connor, is an assistant coach.

– Freshmen Hal Jackson and Traeshon Fields each are averaging 19.3 points in Cedar Rapids Washington’s first three games, all wins.

– Decorah junior Cael LaFrentz is averaging 32.3 points, 12.3 points and four blocked shots in his team’s first three games. The 6-foot-10 son of former NBA player Raef LaFrentz, has made 39 of his 52 field goals (75 percent).

Comments: (319)-398-8258, jeff.johnson@thegazette.com