Susan Harman

Your Prep Sports 

IOWA CITY – West High exhibited the rust that comes of inactivity along with its season-long bugaboo with turnovers, but still defeated Cedar Rapids Washington 66-46 Friday at the West gym in a 4A Substate 5 semifinal game.

The second-ranked Trojans (18-4) play Cedar Rapids Kennedy (11-12) at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids for the right to go to the state tournament. West beat Kennedy 72-35 on Jan. 30.

The reason the Trojans prevailed was pretty simple, and it seems to come with the green and gold décor: defense.

“We were really active; we were really rearing to go,” Patrick McCaffery said. “We were really excited. We’ve been off a week so we had a lot of energy, and we transferred it to the defensive end and really got after them.”

The Trojans forced 13 first-half turnovers while holding the Warriors to just 16 points.

“We were staying in front of them,” senior Seybian Sims said. “We had a good quarter and a half of good defense. We have like four guys over 6-5 and that’s really intimidating. Not only how effective it is, but just looking at it gets in their head.”

West’s defenders just seemed to fly at the Warriors, giving them no room to operate either in the lane or on the perimeter. Even the most routine pass found itself in jeopardy as the Trojans had their hands on the ball constantly.

“I thought defensively we were really locked in most of the first half,” West coach Steve Bergman said. “We just wanted to pressure. We didn’t think they could deal with the pressure. We wanted to speed them up and make them make quick decisions.”

That ball pressure created turnovers or forced shots and invariably led to a fast break for West. The Trojans made 14 of 17 shots in the first half, largely because they were shooting layups or dunking at the end of fast breaks. They finished 28-of-42 (.666) from the field.

The only Warrior with much effectiveness was sophomore Campbell Mitvalsky, who scored 16 points and fought the good fight inside.

West won convincingly, but it will have to get a hold of its turnover problem if it wants to go a lot further in this tournament. The Trojans average 12.4 per game and had 16 in this game.

“We turned it over too much,” Bergman said. “I would guess that 90 percent of those turnovers were unforced. We’ve had a battle all year of turning it over too much. Last year we had one or two games where we turned it over 14 or 15 times. This year we’ve had 11.”

West likes to run and its defense creates transition opportunities where turnovers are a risk, but the numbers are still too high.

“We have to play smarter. I had two misplays where I was trying to play too fast,” Sims said.

“We have to buckle down in practice an get our focus up,” McCaffery said. “If we get our minds right we can really be better in that aspect of the game.”

McCaffery led all scorers with 21 points. Sims had 12 and guard Dante Eldridge had 10.

C.R. Washington       4   12  14  16 –  46

West High                  11  20  16  19 –  66

West High (66) – Dante Eldridge 3-5 3-3 10, Evan Flitz 2-2 0-0 5, Seybian Sims 5-7 2-5 12, Patrick McCaffery10-14 1-2 21, Paul McGee 1-2 0-0 2, Hakeem Odunsi 3-6 0-0 6, Jake Anderson 1-2 1-2 3, Dadrian Hoambrecker 0-0 0-0 0, Brayden Adcock 2-3 0-0 4, Jayson Barnes 1-1 0-0 3, Jalen Gaudet 0-0 0-0 0, Jacob Klein 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 28-42 7-12.

Cedar Rapids Washington (46) – Ross Snitker 1-4 0-0 2, Drew Christensen 0-3 0-0 0, Mick McCurry 4-8 0-0 8, Nolan Potter 2-3 0-0 4, Campbell Mitvalsky 1-5 2-4 16, Keaton Woods 3-5 0-0 6, Collin Westmoreland 2-3 2-2 6, Jonathan Taylor 0-0 0-0 0, Grant Knutson 0-0 0-0 0, Jacob Bockenstedt 1-1 0-0 2, team 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 21-45 4-6 46.

3-point goals – West High 3-4 (Eldridge 1-1, Flitz 1-1, Adcock 0-1, Barnes 1-1); Washington 0-6 (Christensen 0-3, McCurry 0-2, McKinstry 0-1). Total fouls – West 10, Washington 12. Fouled out – None. Technical fouls – None.