Fourth-quarter drought dooms North Cedar in loss to Treynor

DES MOINES - North Cedar's fourth straight appearance at the boys' state basketball tournament turned out to be nothing but a bunch of junk.That's both a description of the ultimate outcome for the Knights in their Class 2A quarterfinal Tuesday afternoon and the way it happened. Treynor threw a junk defense, the triangle-and-two, out there in the fourth quarter and completely flummoxed them for a 61-53 win."We have seen it," said North Cedar's Jayden Johnson. "We just kind of got panicked a little bit ... We've got to be ready for anything. Credit to them for stopping us, shutting us down. That's on us."Jordan Kintzel swished an open 3-pointer 13 seconds into the fourth for a 48-44 North Cedar lead. But those were the last Knights points for exactly seven minutes, a telltale drought few could survive.Treynor scored 14 points in the span for a 58-48 lead. The two guys the Cardinals played man defense against were leading scorers Johnson and Jacob Hay.Neither could get a shot. The guys who did couldn't make them."We've seen a couple teams do it against us," said Hay, who hit four treys and had 17 points against Treynor's man and zone defenses. "When Jayden and I are both shooting the ball well, I've been kind of a streak shooter this year, we've seen it. We definitely practiced against it. Some of the guys just didn't knock down shots. They were good looks, the guys were confident, they just didn't fall."Treynor Coach Scott Rucker said his team used the triangle-and-two once prior this season, and it worked then, too."We practiced it, and had it ready," he said. "It was the right time to go to it, almost out of necessity.""It gave us fits, obviously," said NC Coach Scott Jackson. "We've seen it before, we just didn't knock down shots against it, unfortunately. That might have been the story of the game right there."Treynor (24-1) shot 63 percent from the field, with the vast majority of its looks coming on the interior. North Cedar could not physically matchup with 6-foot-6 center Jacob Flathers (18 points, 11 rebounds) or 6-5 Trey Robinson (19 points, nine boards), with the Cardinals simply lobbing the ball to them at times and having them go get it for layups.Johnson added 11 points for the Knights, who finished 21-5. In this great four-season state tournament run, North Cedar has managed to win its quarterfinal only once."As a senior, I've been here four times in a row. That's an honor," Hay said. "It really is."Here is the game boxscore:

NC by

Jeff Johnson