Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

NORTH LIBERTY – West High wanted to set a tone early in its matchup with cross-town rival Liberty High on Friday.

Mission accomplished.

West High raced to a 19-3 lead less than five minutes in and cruised to a 73-51 win over the Lightning in a Mississippi Valley Conference matchup in North Liberty.

“Every game we want to get on them early and set the tone early,” West High senior forward Pete Moe said. “We definitely did that tonight.”

Moe had a game-high 28 points and nine rebounds to lead five West High players with at least eight points as the Trojans improved to 6-0 all-time against Liberty High.

Freshman Jack McCaffery had 15 points and Kareem Earl added 11 for West High as the Trojans shot 56 percent from the field while putting up a season-high for points.

Savion Taylor added nine points and sophomore Jacob Koch had eight.

“Savion and Jack had great games, those guys are shooters and they shot well,” Moe said. “Last year I didn’t have those guys so teams would box-and-one or double team and with those guys teams can’t do that and it allows me to play my game and have fun out there. If they try to double I have confidence those guys will hit shots.”

Moe had nine points and seven rebounds in the first quarter alone as West High (3-0) jumped to a 24-10 lead.

The Trojans hit 10-of-18 field goal attempts in the opening eight minutes including four 3-pointers by three different players.

“It’s always nice to make shots and we made a bunch of shots,” Bergman said. “I thought we broke the press really well. We didn’t do that very well the rest of the game but we did early. They were getting good looks and missing a lot of those and we were running and scoring.”

Liberty High (0-2) had its fair share of open looks at the hoop during the first period but couldn’t seem to get anything to fall.

The Lightning were 4-of-15 from the field during the first quarter and went four minutes without a point after Ja’Quez Hall hit a 3-pointer 63 seconds into the game.

West High scored 14 unanswered points during that four-minute scoreless spell for Liberty High.

“They knocked down shots and they are a good basketball team and they have some good players and they can shoot it and we just couldn’t hit water if we fell out of a boat tonight,” Kelly said. “We just couldn’t get going.”

Liberty High held a 39-35 rebounding edge that included 21 offensive rebounds and had 11 more field goal attempts than West High but shot just 32 percent from the floor including 28 percent in the first half.

“As a coach I saw how many shots they had that were great shots and they didn’t go in and we have to clean that up,” Bergman said. “We gave up way too many seconds shots, we gave up way too many open shots and it’s going to get better as we go on and I think we are going to build a little depth but for me it all comes down to one thing. We just have to keep working on self-discipline and being a more disciplined team.”

Griffin Kraft had 10 points and eight rebounds for Liberty High while Graham Beckman had six points and five rebounds and Owen Swartzendruber had six points.

Ten different Liberty High players scored in the game and eight had four points or more.

“I am so proud of our guys and how hard they played,” Kelly said. “They played for four quarters they were trying to do as much as they could defensively but we just dug ourselves too much of a hole with those missed shots and couldn’t climb out of it.”

West High                  24  18  19  12  –  73

Liberty High              10  14  14  12  –  51

West High (73) – Jacob Koch 4-5 0-2 8, Brady Simcox 1-1 0-0 2, Pete Moe 11-17 5-6 28, Jack McCaffery 6-10 0-0 15, Kareem Earl 5-9 1-3 11, Savion Taylor 2-6 4-4 9, Wyatt Dotson 0-1 0-0 0, Noah DeSaulniers 0-1 0-0 0, Ayman Bakhit 0-1 0-0 0, Abdelrahman Abdalla 0-1 0-0 0, Totals 29-52 10-15 73.

Liberty High (51) – Ja’Quez Hall 1-5 0-0 3, Christian Barney 2-8 0-0 4, Griffin Kraft 5-11 0-0 10, CJ Miles 1-1 0-0 2, Gage Kampman 2-5 1-2 5, Luke Ramsey 2-4 0-0 6, Keadyn Leiss-Demus 2-10 0-4 4, Max Beckman 2-5 2-2 6, Owen Swartzendruber 1-3 4-4 6, Payton Johnston 2-2 1-1 5, Kalhan Handoo 0-4 0-0 0, Trey Hughes 0-5 0-0 0, Totals 20-63 8-13 51.

3-point field goals – ICL 3-15 (Hall 1-2, Ramsey 2-4, Swartzendruber 0-1, Handoo 0-3, Hughes 0-5), ICW (Koch 0-1, Moe 1-2, McCaffery 3-5, Earl 0-3, Taylor 1-5, Dotson 0-1, DeSaulniers 0-1, Abdalla 0-1). Rebounds – ICL 39 (Kraft 8), ICW 34 (Moe 9). Turnovers – ICL 19, ICW 17. Total fouls – ICL 16, ICW 17. Fouled out – None. Technical fouls – ICW (Moe).

Did you enjoy this subscription free article? Help keep Your Prep Sports free by donating.