Defense, delayed offense puts Iowa City West back into state hoops tournament

CEDAR RAPIDS - He whirled around, pumped his fist and yelled 'Let's go!”

No, it wasn't one of Iowa City West's players. This was Steve Bergman.

The Iowa City West head coach got a little fired up, in a good way, by his team's play in the second half Tuesday night. The Trojans put the hammer down defensively and finally put it down offensively, going on a 15-0 run to start the third quarter that officially disposed of Iowa City High, 50-30. in a Class 4A substate final at the U.S. Cellular Center.

West (19-4) heads back to the state tournament for a sixth consecutive season. They seem ready for a run at another championship.

'Do we have a choice? They're going to play,” said Bergman, in typical ‘Bergy' style. 'I don't see a two-week snowstorm upcoming. We'll take a couple of days off between now and then, and we'll work really hard for a couple of days.”

City High (13-10) surely got West's attention with a late regular-season victory that ended a 15-game losing streak against its biggest rival. Guards Nile Ringen and Henry Mulligan had a combined 30 points in that game.

Tuesday night they had five, all from Ringen. West even employed a rarely seen zone at times to bamboozle City High, which didn't score a point in the second quarter until 1:28 remained.

The Little Hawks scored all of 19 points the final three quarters. No player scored in double figures.

'You're not going to be able to shoot well every game five straight games,” said West's Tanner Lohaus, who had a game-high 15 points. 'So you've going to have to be able to shut the other team down and just fight through it, until you get an offensive spurt where you score 10 in a row, or whatever it was.”

It was 15, and helped bump West's lead from 17-15 at halftime to 30-20 heading to the fourth. Moving 6-foot-7 guard Connor McCaffery from the outside to the post seemed to help fix what had been a flailing Trojans offense.

'We talked in the locker room at halftime about swinging the ball in the same space and just running our offense the way we practice,” Lohaus said. 'Putting Connor in there in the middle helped a lot because his guy was playing tight. We could screen, and they'd have to respect the pop. Their big couldn't quite cut with me.”

'Our defense was really good the whole game, man and zone, but our offense the first half was just perplexing. That's what was frustrating,” Bergman said. 'So we got a little loud in there at halftime and said just run what we do. Connor hurt his ankle in the first half, so we made him a post player. I thought that really freed up a lot of things. It got Tanner to be able to play out on the floor, against someone who was going to struggle out there against him. We got more stops, we got more run good look in the second half, and our half-court offense was just better.”

West is the sixth seed at the state tournament next week and plays third-seeded Des Moines Hoover (21-2) in an 8:15 p.m. quarterfinal March 9 at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. City High ended a renaissance season, one that saw the Little Hawks since 2008.

'What it came down to was four Division I players for them on the court,” said City High Coach Don Showalter. 'When they decide to play basketball, they're pretty darned good.”

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