Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – West High left any lingering shooting woes from Monday night’s trip to Linn-Mar in the dust early in its showdown with Waterloo West.

Then the Trojans picked up where they left off on the defensive end.

The result of that combination was an emphatic 53-32 win over the second-ranked WaHawks in a battle for the top of the Mississippi Valley Conference Valley Division in Iowa City.

“Our defense always sets the tone and once you put them against the way with our defense it sets up our offense,” West High senior Tate Crane said. “We were able to open some doors offensively tonight.”

West High shot 64 percent from the floor and locked down high-scoring Waterloo West (8-2) with its patented man-to-man defense while improving to 9-1 on the season.

Even Brauns had a game-high 19 points and three other Trojans had at least seven as West High won its sixth straight game.

“We took advantage of a few back doors and we got Even the ball and I don’t think they can guard him one-on-one and they tried to part of that time,” West High coach Steve Bergman said. “It was the polar opposite of last night.

They were out denying and playing like their hair was on fire and last night they wouldn’t guard us out of the lane.

A night after slogging its way through 34 percent shooting in a 38-31 come-from-behind win at Linn-Mar the Trojans got an early offensive boost from its senior center.

The 6-foot-9 Brauns scored nine of his game-high 19 points in the opening quarter to help the Trojans take an early 15-8 lead.

“Offensively we wanted to learn from last night, get Even the ball more and I think we did that a lot better tonight,” Crane said. “Once we go through Even it opens up a lot more doors and I thought we opened up offensively a lot more.”

Brauns big first quarter opened up room for the West High players to operate.

The Trojans made 11-of-13 field goal attempts in the second half including both of its 3-point attempts while putting the game away.

It’s just sticking to our game plan,” Brauns said. “We knew the style that they wanted to play and it was just us staying composed. We didn’t turn it over much the first few quarters and that really helped us get quality shots when we needed to.”

While the West High offense was more efficient on Tuesday it was the Trojans’ work on the defensive end that set the tone.

West High held Waterloo West scoreless in the second quarter while building a 24-8 halftime lead.

“They have a certain style, Waterloo West does and our goal was to not let them play that style,” Bergman said. “I thought we did a pretty good job. They seemed frustrated a little out of sync.”

West High forced the WaHawks into nine first-half turnovers and limited Waterloo West to 23 percent shooting on just 13 attempts in the first half.

“Defense, that’s our thing it helps us win games no matter what,” Brauns said. “If our offense isn’t playing well our defense is always going to be there for us and that’s basically what Bergman preaches to us. No matter how we play offensively our defense will always be there for us. The thing that has been good for us this year is we’ve always been intense on defense. There are never highs or lows we are very consistent.”

Waterloo West entered averaging 69.8 points per game but could never get going on Tuesday.

The 32 points for Waterloo West were 20 fewer than their previous season low against Liberty High earlier this month.

“Defensively we’ve been good all year,” Bergman said. “We sold this to these guys that they had to be special defensively because I don’t know if we will ever be special offensively.”

Crane had nine points and Joey Goodman and Nick Pepin each had seven for West High.

Daquavian Walker had 13 of his team-high 14 points for Waterloo West in the second half.

Waterloo West           8   0   8   16  –  32

West High                  15  9  16  13  –  53

West High (53) – Christian Barnes 1-4 0-0 3, Tate Crane 4-7 1-2 9, Joey Goodman 3-4 0-0 7, Nick Pepin 2-4 3-4 7, Ben Vander Leest 2-3 2-2 6, Even Brauns 8-10 3-5 19, Muhammad Simpson 1-1 0-0 2, Team 21-33 9-13 53.

Waterloo West (32) – Daquavian Walker 5-11 4-5 14, Mondre Lagow 1-4 0-0 3, Caleb Haeg 0-1 0-0 0, Isaiah Johnson 2-5 0-0 4, Colby Adams 0-2 0-0 0, Jaden Keller 2-4 1-2 5, Mitch Fordyce 1-2 0-0 2, Amar Kulijuhovic 2-7 0-0 4, Team 13-36 5-7 32.

3-point field goals – ICW 2-6 (Barnes 1-4, Goodman 1-1, Vander Leest 0-1), WW 1-10 (Lagow 1-4, Johnson 0-1, Fordyce 0-1, Kuljuhovic 0-1). Rebounds – ICW 21 (Crane, Pepin, Brauns 4), WW 16 (Keller, Kuljuhovic 4). Turnovers – ICW 15, WW 16. Total fouls – ICW 8, WW 16. Fouled out – None. Technical fouls – None.

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