Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – In more than 30 years on the West High bench Steve Bergman has watched his teams win a lot of games in the postseason.

A lot of games.

Following Friday’s postseason opener Bergman gave the credit to the opposing team and it was well deserved.

Burlington battled back from an early 10-point deficit with a dominant second half on its way to a 63-53 win over West High in a Class 4A, Substate 5 semifinal at West High.

“They get all the credit,” Bergman said of Burlington. “We assisted sometimes but they deserve all the credit.”

Burlington (16-7) shot 68 percent from the field in the second half while outscoring West High 38-26 while avenging a 12-point regular season loss to the Trojans and advancing to the Substate 5 title game.

The Greyhounds will face second-ranked Pleasant Valley (22-0) on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Muscatine.

“It’s just a confidence thing with these guys,” Burlington coach Caleb Akey said. “They really never get too down, they never get too up but they believe in what we are doing and we are at the point of the season where you have to if you want to keep playing.”

West High (14-9) led 18-5 with under a minute to play in the first quarter after Jacob Koch hit a three-pointer to cap a 10-0 burst.

The Trojan lead shrunk to 27-25 at the half and Burlington needed just 64 seconds in the third quarter to take a lead it would never give up.

Freshman Jack McCaffery gave West High a 30-25 lead with a three-pointer 27 seconds into the second half.

It was all Greyhounds the rest of the way.

Burlington scored the next 10 points to take a 35-30 lead and West High would get no closer than three points the rest of the way.

“We aren’t built the best to come from behind and we dug ourselves a hole,” Bergman said. “You have to play pretty perfect then and we just didn’t do it.”

Meanwhile, Burlington was nearly flawless over the final two quarters.

The Greyhounds made 9-of-13 field goal attempts in a 23-point third quarter that ended with a Nate Spear buzzer-beating three-pointer that put Burlington up 48-39.

Merquiche Lewis Jr. scored the first six points of the fourth quarter to push the Burlington lead to 54-39.

West High never got the deficit to single digits.

“We watched a lot of their film, they are a good team and they are playing well,” Bergman said. “They are senior-dominated, four or five starters are seniors and we played a little uptight when things got tough.”

Lewis Jr and Tyce Bertlshofer each had 17 points to lead Burlington while Jackson Carlson had 10 points and nine rebounds.

Bertlshofer entered averaging 3.5 points per game and shooting 20 percent from three-point range but went 4-of-5 from beyond the arc on Friday.

“We really don’t limit him on shooting those shots he just hasn’t been comfortable with it so he hasn’t been taking them,” Akey said. “We needed something tonight and he stepped up.”

Burlington finished with a 27 to 22 rebounding edge against the taller Trojans and grabbed 11 offensive rebounds.

“We have to have a knack to go get the ball, we have to that energy that push and tonight we had that, some games we don’t,” Akey said. “Tonight we put everything out there.”

McCaffery had 16 points for West High and Christian Barnes had 15 for the Trojans.

Pete Moe had 11 points and eight rebounds.

Burlington                  8  17  23  15  –  63

West High                  18  9   12  14  –  53

West High (53) – Christian Barnes 6-10 2-2 15, Jacob Koch 1-7 0-0 3, Pete Moe 5-7 1-1 11, Jack McCaffery 5-13 4-4 16, Kareem Earl 3-6 0-0 6, Ben Hoefer 1-1 0-0 2, Totals 21-44 7-7 53.

Burlington (63) – Nate Spear 3-7 1-2 8, Amarion Davis 3-10 2-3 9, Tyce Bertlshofer 6-10 1-2 17, Jackson Carlson 5-10 0-0 10, Juan Reyes 1-2 0-2 2, Merquiche Lewis Jr. 7-8 3-5 17, Totals 25-47 7-14 63.

Three-point field goals – ICW 4-20 (Barnes 1-3, Koch 1-7, McCaffery 2-8, Earl 0-2), BUR 6-14 (Spear 1-5, Davis 1-4, Bertlshofer 4-5). Rebounds – ICW 22 (Moe 8), BUR 27 (Carlson 9). Turnovers – ICW 12, BUR 7. Total fouls – ICW 18, BUR 7. Fouled out – None. Technical fouls – None.

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