Iowa City West boys’ basketball slips past No. 4 Cedar Rapids Prairie

CEDAR RAPIDS — For the vast majority of Steve Bergman’s hall of fame coaching career, “zone” has been a word considered among the worst of the four-letter variety. If not THE worst.

Bergman loves teaching man to man, have his kids get up in someone’s face, not give them any room and basically just frustrate the bejeezus out of them. Many of his best teams have thrived on it over the years, leading to a few state titles.

But when his Iowa City West boys’ basketball team needed some sort of spark, something to get it going Tuesday night against Class 4A No. 4 Cedar Rapids Prairie, Bergman and co-coach Paul Rundquist decided to play ... zone. A 2-3 zone, to be specific.

Boy, how it turned things completely around. West outscored Prairie in the third quarter, 17-4, turned a seven-point halftime deficit into eventually a nine-point lead midway through the fourth quarter and held on by their fingernails for a 49-47 victory.

“That was big,” said sophomore guard Jacob Koch, who splashed four 3-point shots in a 13-point night. “We got a lot of stops there in the third quarter with it. That helped a lot. They barely scored. We have played some zone this season, but just a little bit of it.”

“They slowed us down,” said Prairie Coach Jeremy Rickertsen. “Having said that, I thought we got some good looks within that span. We didn’t get to the free-throw line the first half, and (center) Gabe Burkle was able to get there four times (in the second half), though he only made one. It just took us out our rhythm we had going the first half.”

The thing was Rickertsen and his staff told their boys to get ready for zone in the second half. Prairie (9-2) was very comfortable offensively against West’s man look, shooting 64 percent from the field in the first half to build a 30-23 halftime lead.

“We actually said right before we came out for the second half, ‘Hey, be ready for zone.’ We practiced against it. It’s not like it was a surprise,” Rickertsen said. “But when you don’t see it ... I guess it was the shift in the game.”

This was a needed victory for West (8-2), which came in on a two-game losing streak (to Dubuque Hempstead and Cedar Falls), both of those defeats by double figures. The Trojans recently regained the services of senior point guard Christian Barnes (son of former Iowa Hawkeye Val Barnes but have lost junior forward Savion Taylor (a 10.5-point-per-game scorer) for the rest of the season with a knee injury and subsequent surgery.

Barnes added 12 points here for West, with forward Kareem Earl (son of former Hawkeye Acie Earl) leading the way with 15 points. Top scorer Pete Moe (son of former Hawkeye Jeff Moe) came in averaging about 24 a game but went scoreless in the first half and ended with nine.

Freshman Jack McCaffery (son of Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery) came in as West’s second-leading scorer this season but was blanked, though he was a factor in the second half on the boards.

“It was nice to finally get back on our feet,” Koch said. “We had two rough games, lost by double digits. So it was nice to come out here and be ready to play.”

Prairie extended its defense to full court down the stretch, which led to a wave of West turnovers and the Hawks getting back into the game. A go-ahead 3-point try by Jake Walter missed with 1:40 left, as did a Jack Wagemester 3 attempt with about 40 seconds left.

A Moe dunk was followed by a Dionte Fliss baseline jumper for Prairie with 17 seconds left, making it a 49-47 game. Prairie got one more West turnover with 11 seconds to go, called timeout, worked the ball around sharply, with Wagemester wide open at the top of the circle for a trey attempt.

The ball went in and out, the buzzer sounded, and that was that. Walter had 18 points to lead Prairie, its only double-figure scorer.

“We wanted the ball to start in Jake’s hands and have him make a decision,” Rickertsen said. “He did a pretty good job of getting to the middle of it, found Dionte on the baseline, and Dionte made a great pass to Jack. He had a great look at it, was in rhythm and it was half-way down. We fought.”

AT CEDAR RAPIDS PRAIRIE

IOWA CITY WEST (49): Jack McCaffery 0-3 0-1 0, Pete Moe 3-8 3-4 9, Kareem Earl 6-11 3-4 15, Christian Barnes 5-8 1-3 12, Jacob Koch 4-6 1-2 13, Wyatt Dotson 0-0 0-0 0, Brady Simcox 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 18-34 8-14 49.

C.R. PRAIRIE (47): Reid Burkle 1-3 0-0 2, Gabe Burkle 4-10 1-4 9, Jack Wagemester 0-3 0-0 0, Elijah Ward 3-7 0-0 7, Jake Walter 7-12 2-2 18, Everett Koch 2-2 0-0 4, Makelle Taylor 0-2 0-0 0, Brayden Duerksen 0-3 0-0 0, Dionte Fliss 3-3 1-2 7. Totals 20-45 4-8 47.

Halftime - Prairie 30, West 23. 3-point goals - West 5-9 (Earl 0-2, Barnes 1-3, Koch 4-4), Prairie 3-13 (Wagemester 0-2, Ward 1-3, Walter 2-6, Taylor 0-2). Rebounds - West 24 (Moe 8), Prairie 24 G. Burkle 5). Total fouls - West 8, Prairie 16. Fouled out - None. Turnovers - West 16, Prairie 12.

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