Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – In most instances it is the big guy faced with battling defenders in the lane all winter long that preaches the importance of off-season weight workouts to perimeter players.

When it came to friends and former teammates Even Brauns and Masen Miller it was the other way around.

Brauns spent the months leading up to his senior season hitting the weight room at the constant urging of his workout partner and high-scoring Regina senior point guard Miller.

Mid-way through his final prep season Brauns is already seeing a return on his investment to the weight room.

“He is a big reason why I hit the weight room so hard this year,” Brauns said of Miller. “He loves the weight room and he hits it hard every day and that attitude is contagious. It has helped me a lot this year.”

A noticeably bulkier Brauns has been stuffing the state sheet for third-ranked West High this season helping the Trojans to a 9-1 start.

The 6-foot-9 senior is averaging career-highs in points, rebounds and blocked shots all while often being the focus of opponents’ game plans.

Adjusting to being the center of an opposing team’s plans is something else Brauns has discussed with Miller who has seen all sorts of different defenses over the past two seasons.

“We talk about it almost every time we see each other I’ll text him after a game and tell him how teams played me and he’ll tell me what a team did with him,” Brauns said. “It’s been nice to have somebody else that knows what I’m talking about and we sympathize a lot with each other.”

Brauns averaged 11 points and 5.5 rebounds per game as a junior in his first season at West High after transferring from Regina.

This season Brauns has gone from a complimentary player to all-state forward Patrick McCaffery to the main scoring threat for West High and has still seen his offensive numbers improve.

“It’s one hundred percent mental,” Brauns said. “It’s just getting into my flow, teams try to take me out of what I want to do and for me that’s something I have to work on is just finding my rhythm.”

Brauns immediately pointed to increased strength and physicality as the reason for his rise in production this season.

“I’ve gotten stronger and more physical and that’s been really important for me,” Brauns said. “Those two things are so much better than last year and that’s what has really gotten me to this point of being that guy in post.”

Despite facing constant double and even triple teams, Brauns had 10 points and nine rebounds in a 38-31 win over Linn-Mar on Monday.

He followed that up with a 19-point performance on 8-of-10 shooting in an emphatic 53-32 win over second-ranked Waterloo West on Tuesday.

Brauns is shooting 66 percent from the field this season while leading West High with 15.1 points per game.

“It’s just night in and night out it’s a battle,” Brauns said. “Every night in the post it’s physical and you have to be ready top play.”

While Brauns has improved on the offensive end it has been his work defensively that has caught the attention of West High coach Steve Bergman.

Brauns blocked 30 shots in 22 games last season, an average of 1.4 per game.

This season Brauns has already swatted 28 shots, 3.1 per contest, and has altered countless more attempts with his presence around the rim.  

“He’s gotten better defensively,” Bergman said. “He’s improved on that end of the court a lot, he’s more aggressive.”

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