This Cedar Rapids Washington boys’ basketball team is kind of a conundrum

IOWA CITY - First they had to make believers out of themselves. Now they’re working on everyone else.

That list of everyone else includes the Iowa High School Athletic Association.

Cedar Rapids Washington’s Warriors are playing as well as any Class 4A boys’ basketball team around these parts. They’ve won eight of nine games, including a 65-56 come-from-behind job Friday night at Iowa City West.

The only loss in the stretch was a competitive 10-pointer a couple of weeks ago at top-ranked Cedar Rapids Kennedy. The wins include one against eighth-ranked Dubuque Senior in which Washington (11-7) rallied from a 16-point hole.

Friday night, West (10-8) led by 14 points in the first half and 12 at halftime.

“Recently, ever since the Christmas break, we’ve developed the utmost confidence in each other,” said Washington’s Trai Sain. “We can go down 10, 15, 20 points, and we can still play. We’ve proven the game’s never over, proven that twice now after being down 16 to Senior. Two teams that have been ranked or should be ranked.”

“We didn’t get rattled,” said Washington Coach Justin Decker. “I think in the past, we’ve been that team. You can see in our last eight, nine games that we’re not rattled anymore. I think our guys believe that we’re playing good basketball, and we’ve still got more in there.”

West led by five points after three quarters, but Washington pecked away, with Braden Becker’s 3-pointer with 1:45 left giving it the lead for good, 56-54. It came directly after a possession in which Becker got out of control on a lane drive and picked up an offensive foul.

That’s called making up for a mistake. Immediately.

After a Washington defensive stop, Sain nailed a trey to make it a 59-54 game.

“We knew we could do it. We’ve done it before,” Becker said. “That’s our mentality. Don’t give up, play hard. Don’t give up, and go get it again.”

A long 6-foot-5 forward who has had a wonderful senior season, surpassing 1,000 points in his career, Sain has not gotten discouraged by a lack of Division I college offers, saying he put aside his recruiting to concentrate on helping his team. He said he’s exploring prep schools and junior colleges, unless something crops up here late D-I wise that he loves.

He had a game-high 22 points and did an expert job defensively on Jack McCaffery, holding West’s leading scorer to eight points. Wash’s Noah Johnson had a one-handed power dunk just before the buzzer to put an exclamation point on this one.

Johnson finished with 14 points.

Kareem Earl, West’s other leading scorer, was limited to six points. Jacob Koch led the Trojans with 17, including a trio of treys.

“A little of it was rebuilding. We got Noah (from Linn-Mar), we lost Will (Hodges to Aplington-Parkersburg),” Sain said. “We were trying to find ourselves for a little bit, and once we found ourselves, we found out defensively we can be a dominant defensive team. We’ve put it all together, and we’ve been able to flourish.”

Now the question becomes what the IHSAA decides to do with Washington for its postseason brackets, which are expected to be released this week. The overall record is so-so, but when you look at the recent results ...

“This is kind of the first year where it’s been out of the coaches’ hands,” Decker said. “But I believe we can be a ‘2’ seed in our substate. I really do, I think we’re capable, especially now that we’re playing our best basketball at the end of the year.

“Everyone has injuries and lose guys to sickness. We lost some games early in the season we could have been more competitive. No excuses, because we got beat. But now I think we are showing exactly how good we can be.”

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AT IOWA CITY WEST

CEDAR RAPIDS WASHINGTON (65): Noah Johnson 7-12 0-1 14, Jaden Harris 2-4 0-0 4, Traijan Sain 7-17 7-10 22, Braden Becker 4-9 0-0 9, Jesse Sellers 3-11 0-0 8, Bryce Brim 1-2 2-2 4, Miles Lapointe 2-3 0-0 4, J.J. Willis 0-3 0-0 0. Totals 26-61 9-13 65.

IOWA CITY WEST (56): Jack McCaffery 4-10 0-0 8, Kareem Earl 2-10 2-3 6, Julian Manson 2-6 2-2 6, Jacob Koch 7-14 0-0 17, TaeVeon Stevens 4-8 3-5 13, Ben Hoefer 2-2 0-0 6, Brady Simcox 0-3 0-0 0. Aidan Jacobsen 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 21-53 7-10 56.

Halftime - West 36, Washington 24. 3-point goals - Washington 4-15 (Harris 0-2, Sain 1-3, Becker 1-3, Sellers 2-5, Brim 0-1, Willis 0-1), West 7-21 (McCaffery 0-3, Earl 0-1, Koch 3-8, Stevens 2-4, Hoefer 2-2, Simcox 0-3). Rebounds - Washington 39 (Sain 8), West 30 (McCaffery 11). Total fouls - Washington 12, West 11. Fouled out - None. Turnovers - Washington 8, West 13.

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