Xavier regroups, recovers, prepares for 4A championship game: Girls’ state basketball notes

DES MOINES — Tom Lilly crawled into bed at 12:15 Friday morning, crawled out at 5:30.

He was exhausted, and he was wired.

“A little bit of both,” he said. “That’s kind of the way it was with the whole team on the bus ride home. The kids have a lot more energy that I do.”

No. 5 Cedar Rapids Xavier edged top-ranked Dallas Center-Grimes, 55-50, in a triple-overtime Class 4A semifinal thriller Thursday night at the girls’ state basketball tournament at Wells Fargo Arena.

“One for the ages,” Lilly said. “One for the memory bank, for sure.

“We talked about this for a long time on the way back; the shoe could have been on the other foot. On the way out of the arena, I had to walk through an area where the Dallas Center-Grimes parents were. I overheard how they had a lot of chances to win, and they were right.”

The Saints (19-6) were scheduled to go through a light walk-through Friday, in an effort to preserve their legs, in preparation for Saturday’s 4A championship game against No. 3 Sioux City Heelan (23-2).

Tipoff is 2:30 p.m.

“Xavier is a team I had penciled in at the beginning of the year as a possible state-champion team,” Heelan Coach Darron Koolstra said. “We played them at team camp last summer. They’re a well-coached team, they’re long and athletic and they’re going to be ready for us.”

Heelan rolled through its first two games, downing No. 11 Waverly-Shell Rock and No. 2 Glenwood by counts of 54-33 and 68-51.

“They’re good,” Lilly said. “They’re fast and they shoot well.”

The Crusaders were 11 of 16 from 3-point range in the semifinals.

Koolstra has coached Heelan to three state titles (2008, 2010 and 2020). Lilly-led Saints teams reigned in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2013.

This year’s team, steeled as always by the Mississippi Valley Conference in the regular season, is defined by depth and balance.

Freshman Libby Fandel (13.0 points per game) has blossomed immediately into an all-state-caliber player. Kyla Mason (9.8 ppg) doesn’t start, but she had the two free throws at the end of regulation that extended the game, and she had the game-clinching basket at the end of the third overtime.

The Saints go 10 deep without much of a drop-off.

None of Heelan’s top seven scorers are seniors. Sophomore Brooklyn Stanley leads at 14.3 and 5.0 rebounds per game.

The Miss Iowa Basketball case for Hannah Stuelke

Sportswriters will gather at Wells Fargo Arena on Saturday to select the Iowa Press Sports Writers Association all-state teams, which will be released Tuesday.

The top award is Miss Iowa Basketball 2022, and odds are good that Cedar Rapids Washington’s Hannah Stuelke will become the Metro’s first winner since Linn-Mar’s Kiah Stokes won in 2011.

A University of Iowa signee, the 6-foot-2 Stuelke concluded her high school career with 1,793 points, which ranks 50th all-time among 5-on-5 players, fifth among Metro players.

She grabbed 853 career rebounds (79th all-time, sixth in the Metro).

As a senior, Stuelke led the state in scoring at 29.1 points per game, shooting 58.1 percent from the floor. She averaged 10.3 rebounds per contest.

The only hole in her resume is the absence of a state-tournament appearance. The Warriors were 55-28 in her four seasons.

Only seniors are eligible for the award. Other potential candidates include Jada Gyamfi of Johnston — Stuelke’s future teammate at Iowa — and Brooklyn Meyer of West Lyon.

Comments: jeff.linder@thegazette.com