West takes Linn-Mar shots, survives them

MARION – You've gotta shoot it, you've gotta rebound it, you've gotta play defense.

For the Linn-Mar Lions, it was check that off the list, check that and check that Friday night.

This was the exact recipe for a huge upset, with one missing ingredient: the final score.

'We did everything but win,” Coach Chris Robertson said, after top-ranked and three-time defending Class 4A champ Iowa City West escaped the Lions den, 61-56. 'Like we said afterward, we had some things written on the board, and we accomplished a lot of them. We just didn't win.”

Sophomore point guard Devontae Lane's inside bucket broke a 53-53 tie with 1:33 left and put West (11-0) ahead for good. Linn-Mar's Nic Uhlir had an open corner trey a few seconds later go around out, West rebounded, and Connor McCaffery made six clutch free throws the rest of the way to help the Trojans survive.

The son of University of Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery, who was in the house watching, has been nagged with a sprained left shooting wrist, though it didn't show here.

'We made plays, and we made free throws down the stretch, and that was big,” said McCaffery, who finished with a team-high 16 points. 'I think this will help us as a team because now we know. Coach has been telling us we need to work on this, we need to work on that. Now we're going to believe him even more. We know what happens when you let good shooters get hot. They're going to make shots.”

That's exactly what seventh-ranked Linn-Mar (8-2) did to much more than just hang around. The Lions made 9 of their first 15 attempts from 3-point land, continuing a recent trend that saw them hit 40 of 74 combined in three of their previous four games.

Time and again, Jordan Bohannon and teammates clutched up from behind the arc. Bohannon had five treys and a game-high 22 points.

'We knew that's what they were going to do,” said West's Alex Henderson. 'In their own gym, they can hit everything.”

'It was a good game, and they played well,” said West Coach Steve Bergman. 'But if we do our thing (defensively), we can maybe make you do your thing not as well. I told them after the game that if you wrote a script ahead of time as to what would get us in trouble, get us beat, what would give us a tough game, well, we wrote it … We let them go hit 3s. We talked about ‘I don't care who's guarding who, just cover people.' We left a shooter, no hedge on a ball screen. We're young, and it showed there.”

Where would West have been without probably its most unsung player? Henderson came off the bench to score a career-high 15 points, not missing any of his six field-goal attempts or two free-throw tries.

Bergman called the hustle guard his best defender.

'I'm always looking to spark something,” Henderson said. 'They need someone to come in and do that, so that's what I try to do every game.”

West had an 11-point lead early in the second quarter, only to have Linn-Mar shoot its way back into the game. It was 29-27 at halftime and 46-43 Lions after Bohannon hit a long trey from out front at the end of the third.

'We knew we were going to have to play well, and at both ends,” Robertson said. 'We knew we were going to have to guard. Watching them on film, I haven't seen a team score that easily in a long time, maybe ever. I thought we guarded, really made them work, went toe to toe with them. A couple of shots here or there, and it's different. But I was proud of their effort. They battled all night.”

Linn-Mar plays Saturday at eighth-ranked Ankeny Centennial.

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AT LINN-MAR

IOWA CITY WEST (61): Tanner Lohaus 2-4 0-0 4, Wali Parks 2-8 0-1 4, Connor McCaffery 4-8 8-8 16, David DiLeo 4-7 0-0 9, Devontae Lane 5-8 3-9 13, Alex Henderson 6-6 2-2 15, Nate Barnes 0-0 0-0 0, Dallas Majors 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 23-41 13-20 61.

LINN-MAR (56): Lane Halupnik 2-4 2-2 7, Ryan Schmidt 0-1 0-0 0, Trevor Noble 3-9 0-0 6, Nic Uhlir 3-10 1-2 8, Jordan Bohannon 7-14 3-3 22, Beau Klostermann 1-1 0-0 2, Jordan Brandt 2-5 2-3 8, Riley Murphy 1-1 0-0 3, Jason Tichy 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 19-45 8-10 56.

Halftime – West 29, Linn-Mar 27. 3-point goals – West 2-6 (McCaffery 0-3, DiLeo 1-2, Henderson 1-1), Linn-Mar 10-21 (Halupnik 1-2, Uhlir 1-4, Bohannon 5-11, Brandt 2-3, Murphy 1-1). Rebounds – West 24 (DiLeo 7), Linn-Mar 22 (Schmidt, Noble, Uhlir 5). Total fouls – West 15, Linn-Mar 15. Fouled out – None. Turnovers – West 9, Linn-Mar 14.