Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – An emphasis for City High this season has been setting the tone early in games.

The Little Hawks needed less than four minutes to do just that in its meeting with cross-town rival Liberty High on Friday.

City High bolted to a 13-0 lead and never trailed on its way to an impressive 52-43 win over Class 5A No. 13 Liberty High in a meeting of Mississippi Valley Conference cross-divisional opponents in Iowa City.

“That is something that we’ve been talking about for weeks now is we need to be the team that sets the tone,” City High sophomore Kaitlin Loria said. “We need to the team that is more physical and we need to the team that is going, going, going and tonight we came out with so much fire and so much enthusiasm and it went from there.”

Loria hit three 3-pointers during the 13-0 burst to open the game as City High built an early advantage that would never be cut under five points.

Tessa Driscoll led three City High players with 15 points as the Little Hawks improved to 4-1 with their fourth consecutive win.

“We said in the locker room before the game we have to start off strong,” Driscoll said. “That was the goal and we came out 10-0 and that energy from the start was really important for us.”

Loria hit a 3-pointer just 37 seconds into the game to give City High a 3-0 lead.

Back-to-back baskets by Emmy McComas and Hattie Galloway gave the Little Hawks a 7-0 cushion less than three minutes into the game.

Loria capped the 13-0 run to open the game with back-to-back 3-pointers in a span of 27 seconds.

“Since that first game we are sharing the ball more and we aren’t getting in our heads,” Loria said. “We were down in that first game against Central DeWitt and that will still happen sometimes, we know that, but we weren’t going to let it happen this game.”

City High led 15-9 after the opening quarter and quickly pushed the lead back to double digits with a 10-0 run to open the second quarter.

Loria had a conventional 3-point play and Driscoll hit a 3-pointer to cap the 10-0 spurt that pushed the lead to 25-9.

“It started with a lot of excitement,” City High coach Lynsey Barnard said. “They were excited to come out and see how we stacked up and I know (Liberty High) was missing Maddie and Ava (Casey) but we wanted to see how we stacked up. It was fun to see them pour confidence into each other.”

Liberty High (2-3) closed the first half on a 9-2 run to cut the lead to 31-20 and got as close as four points at 38-34 with 2:55 remaining in the third quarter.

City High had the answer in the form of an 8-2 run to end the quarter that featured four points from Driscoll.

“This whole week we were talking about being physical and crashing the boards,” Driscoll said. “We know this team really well, we’ve scouted their personnel and we knew what we had to do.”

City High got 12 points each from Loria and sophomore Hattie Galloway and shot 41 percent from the floor.

McComas has six points and senior guard Auggie Palmer had a team-high nine rebounds.

“We call it sharing the love,” Driscoll said. “We have so many people that can score and having that many people it’s great for us and very helpful to the way we play.”

The Little Hawks limited Liberty High to 22 percent shooting including just 2-of-30 from beyond the 3-point arc.

Hannah Ramsey led Liberty High with 17 points and 10 rebounds and freshman Natalie Schechinger had seven points and six boards for the Lightning.

“I think we needed the first loss,” Driscoll said. “I think it was important for us to see there are so many great teams that we have to compete with and we’ve come back after that ready to play.”

Liberty High             9   11  16  7  –  43

City High                   15  16  15  6  –  52     

Liberty High (43) – Janessa Mosley 2-9 0-0 5, Natalie Schechinger 2-7 2-2 7, Ava Tague 0-0 2-2 2, Kennedy Goodheart 0-11 2-2 2, Sydney Van Heukelom 1-3 0-0 2, Morgan Bennett 3-6 0-0 6, Madilyn Meyer 0-6 2-2 2, Natalie Ramsey 6-21 5-7 17, Totals 14-63 13-15 43.

City High (52) – Eve Vitense 1-1 1-1 3, Maybes Miller 1-2 0-0 2, August Palmer 1-7 0-0 2, Hattie Galloway 4-8 4-5 12, Kaitlin Loria 4-6 1-1 12, Emmy McComas 3-9 0-0 6, Tessa Driscoll 4-11 6-6 15, Totals 18-44 12-13 52.

3-point field goals – Liberty High 2-30 (Mosley 1-6, Schechinger 1-3, Goodheart 0-10, Van Heukelom 0-1, Bennett 0-2, Meyer 0-4, Ramsey 0-4), City High 4-14 (Miller 0-1, Palmer 0-2, Galloway 0-2, Loria 3-3, McComas 0-2, Driscoll 1-4). Rebounds – Liberty High 38 (Ramsey 10), City High 38 (Palmer 9). Total fouls – Liberty High 16, City High 16. Turnovers – Liberty High 10, City High 19. Fouled out – None. Technical fouls – None.

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