Iowa City Regina boys basketball team headed to boys state basketball tournament

MUSCATINE - After he concluded a postgame interview Saturday night following his Iowa City Regina boys basketball team’s 51-37 win over Northeast Goose Lake in a Class 2A substate final, head coach Paul Rundquist nudged a reporter standing next to him.

“Look at this,” Rundquist said, pulling a nice-looking glass coin of sorts out of his left pants pocket.

It’s a commemorative coin/medallion with the name Gordon D. Rundquist on it. That’s Paul’s father, who died unexpectedly last year.

A hall of fame coach, Gordon was a mentor for his son, his biggest influence, his biggest supporter, his basketball teacher, his friend. They spent time together on staff at Iowa City West with head coach Steve Bergman.

Gordon Rundquist donated his eyes following his death, and Wreaths of Remembrance gave Paul the keepsake. He has had it since early this year and in his pocket for every Regina game.

The Regals haven’t lost since.

“A good-luck charm,” Paul Rundquist said. “I can feel him here with me right now. Our first state tournament together at West with Berg, the substate game was right here in this gym.”

Regina (22-1) is the third seed at state in 2A and draws sixth-seeded Aplington-Parkersburg (22-3) in a 3:45 p.m. quarterfinal Wednesday, March 11 at Casey’s Center in Des Moines. It’s the second time in three years the Regals are qualifiers.

This one was sorta expected considering the number of key players who returned off a good team last season. There are athletes who were part of a Regina football team that lost the 1A state championship game in overtime, unusual size in 6-foot-9 Ben Wade, 6-5 Will Litton and muscular 6-3 Tate Wallace and a head coach who has had teams qualify now 10 times for the state tournament, including winning a 3A title at Mount Pleasant.

“I guess, to accomplish it it's kind of a relief, you know?” Rundquist said. “We all put stress on ourselves, and, sure, I always say to the kids ‘OK, every game is important,’ because your first game of the year, you know you're trying to win your conference. You know that your every win or loss affects districts. And in districts, every win or loss is going to affect if you make it to the state tournament, where your seeds are going to be. So to me, this is game 23, and now we're hoping to play three more.”

“I mean, we’ve just got to take it one game at a time,” said Litton, who had a game-high 16 points. “We're focused on next week and who we’ve got to play next. It has just been all about us this year.“

Muscatine has a very dim gym lights wise, which seems to affect shooting for teams that aren’t used to it. Thus Northeast shot 29.2 percent from the field and Regina 36.5.

Which goes back to Regina’s size. Most all of Regina’s points in this came right at the rim or the free-throw line, with the exception of a pair of big second-half 3-pointers from Jack O’Leary.

The Regals bumped up a three-point halftime lead to as many as 11 in the third quarter and a lot of the fourth. Regina’s size was a factor defensively, with Northeast not finding much look inside.

Leading scorer Jaxen Christiansen, a sophomore guard, also had a rough night with 13 points on 5-of-22 field-goal shooting.

“We do need to clean some stuff up with some of our sets,” Litton said. “And we do need to do a better job of rebounding, especially defensively. That's a really good offensive rebounding team. We'll definitely put an emphasis on that this week.

AT MUSCATINE

NORTHEAST GOOSE LAKE (37): Emerson Kreinbrink 3-11 3-4 9, Jade Mielk 0-0 0-0 0, Colby Gray 2-7 2-2 7, Connor Soesbe 3-6 0-2 6, Jaxen Christiansen 5-22 1-3 13, Maxzen Eskildsen 1-2 0-0 2. Totals 14-48 6-11 37.

IOWA CITY REGINA (51): Tate Wallace 5-10 3-7 13, Ben Wade 3-9 0-0 6, Will Litton 7-15 2-2 16, Miles Nuzback 0-3 0-2 0, Drew Greve 1-6 1-2 3, Emmett Burke 1-1 0-0 2, Jack O’Leary 2-8 5-6 11. Totals 19-52 11-19 51.

Halftime - Iowa City Regina 21, Northeast Goose Lake 18. 3-point goals - Northeast Goose Lake 3-17 (Kreinbrink 0-1, Gray 1-3, Christiansen 2-12, Eskildsen 0-1), Iowa City Regina 2-12 (O’Leary 2-3, Wallace 0-1, Wade 0-2, Litton 0-3, Nuzback 0-1, Greve 0-2). Rebounds - Northeast Goose Lake 32 (Soesbe 9), Iowa City Regina 42 (Wade 11). Total fouls - Northeast Goose Lake 14, Iowa City Regina 11. Fouled out - None. Turnovers - Northeast Goose Lake 11, Iowa City Regina 11.

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