Four straight is great for Iowa City West, North Cedar

DES MOINES - Open up 'The Barn.'

Wells Fargo Arena is a nice place and everything, but it has become so passé for the North Cedar boys' basketball team.

Old Veterans Memorial Auditorium is right next door, so someone find the keys and unlock the doors. Let the Knights play there instead.

'We've been joking that we're tired of playing at Wells Fargo. We want to play somewhere else,' said North Cedar's Jacob Hay. 'But, really, we all know that's our favorite place to play.'

They're certainly familiar with 'The Well,' that's for sure. North Cedar takes on Treynor in a Class 2A quarterfinal at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, the fourth year in a row the Knights are playing in the state basketball tournament.

Iowa City West plays Southeast Polk in a 4A quarterfinal Wednesday afternoon, also marking its fourth consecutive trip to state. MOC/Floyd Valley is in the 3A field for a fourth straight year.

'We feel very fortunate,' said North Cedar Coach Scott Jackson. 'That's 'four-tunate, with the F-O-U-R.''

Only 37 schools have four-peated (or more) since the state tournament became a qualifying event in the early 1930s. Before that, you got there via invitation only.

Dubuque Wahlert has four-peated three separate times: in the 1960s, 1980s and between 1999 and 2002. This is the second four-peat for West, which qualified from 1995 through 1998.

The Trojans are seeking their third straight state championship, North Cedar its first.

'It's pretty special. The kids feel good about it,' Jackson said. 'I think we have developed the mindset in our program that the state tournament is an expectation now.'

'It's not easy to do. We know that,' said West Coach Steve Bergman. 'When you go a lot, people tend to take it for granted. But we talked about that a little bit this week. We've been there (four years in a row), but you've got to realize how special each appearance is. It's been a lot of good players, but sometimes you just need luck.'

Linn-Mar has the record for most consecutive state tournament trips, an amazing nine from 2004 to 2012. Even more remarkable is that the Lions won their quarterfinal game each of those years.Cedar Rapids Regis held the record before that with seven state tournament trips in a row from 1989 to 1995. Three schools (Western Christian, Sioux City Heelan and the old Davenport High School) have qualified six straight years.

'Four in a row is just incredible. An honor, really,' said North Cedar's Josh Kintzel, who joins Hay and West's Wyatt Lohaus as seniors who have played varsity ball since they were freshmen.

'In my opinion, we have a future hall of fame coach in Coach Jackson,' Hay said. 'He coaches the right way, we play the game the right way.'

West also has a future hall of fame coach in Bergman, who has won 472 games in 28 seasons at West, Monticello and West Liberty. Seemingly a prerequisite for a four-peat, the Trojans have had a lot of individual talent the past four years in Division I college guys like Lohaus (a Northern Iowa signee) and Jeremy Morgan (a freshman at UNI).

This West team is as talented top to bottom as its three predecessors but also is relatively inexperienced, with a freshman (Connor McCaffrey, son of Iowa Coach Fran McCaffrey) at point guard.

'This is as open a 4A field as I've ever seen,' Bergman said. 'There are lots of good teams, lot of parity. The teams with the advantage usually are those with experience. That's something we'll have to overcome. I like our talent. It's good. But our inexperience is something that's a concern. You never know how they're going to react. The state tournament is a different animal. You just don't know.'They expect to win.

'Our goal is not just to get to state, it's to win state,' said West's Nick Gallagher. 'So it's great to get to state, but what you want to do is to get there and do damage and win it all. That's our ultimate goal.'

'That's the next step for us, the next goal. To win it all,' Hay said. 'We're just going to take it game by game.'Here is the list of teams to make the state tournament four consecutive years or more:

Most Consecutive by Jeff Johnson