Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – The emphasis for Clear Creek Amana early this season under first-year head coach Matt Hoeppner has been almost solely on the defensive end of the court.

As Hoeppner has preached to his team the offense will be there when its needed.

The Clippers were clicking on both ends of the court on Tuesday in a highlight anticipated top-10 match with West High.

Seniors Lena Evans and Averie Lower combined for 42 points and Class 4A fourth-ranked Clear Creek Amana locked down defensively early on its way to a 68-57 win over 5A sixth-ranked West High in Iowa City.

“We know they can put it in the basket but we still hang our hat on what we do defensively,” Hoeppner said. “We don’t talk a lot about offense because they know what they are going to do but we talk about defense creating offense and we did that a lot early.”

Clear Creek Amana scored 84 in a season-opening win over Burlington last week.

On Tuesday in its first huge test of the season the Clipper defense passed with flying colors.

Evans had 14 of her game-high 26 points in the first half as Clear Creek Amana (2-0) built an insurmountable 42-24 halftime lead.

“Coach knows we are totally able to score on offense no matter what,” Evans said. “This year we’ve really focused on defense and I think playing a tough team like this showed the type of improvement we’ve made defensively.”

Clear Creek Amana buried eight first-half 3-pointers, three from senior Brooklyn Lee and two each from Lower and freshman Lydia Keller while building an 18-point halftime cushion.

“Playing hard teams like this I feel like its easy to have a slow start so being aggressive right away was really good for us,” Evans said. “That was a big thing.”

West High (1-1) opened the second half with an 8-0 spurt that cut the lead to 42-32.

Evans halted the run with a 3-pointer and West High never got the lead under single digits the rest of the game.

“The biggest thing so far I’ve seen so far is this team is together,” Hoeppner said. “They’ve really molded together as one. They are one unit and I think that’s what is going to carry us forward.”

Evans and Lower led three players in double figures as Lee finished with 12 points and Keller added nine points.

It’s a huge defensive emphasis this year but I think we’ve improved all around,” Lower said. “We had a couple of girls step up tonight that don’t always have a lot of minutes and that was really big.”

Grace Fincham had 21 points to lead West High while Sasha Baldwin had 10 points and Abby Neumiller had nine for the Trojans.

Clear Creek Amana hosts 4A No. 12 Solon on Friday and has December games remaining against 5A No. 10 Cedar Rapids Washington, 5A No. 5 Liberty High and 3A second-ranked Williamsburg.

“Our schedule is kind of loaded of these games,” Hoeppner said. “When people asked me about this team coming into this season the biggest thing for them was whatever they didn’t do right or do well last year they wanted to really work hard to improve that going into this year and this game really showed some of that especially on the defensive end.”
Clear Creek Amana              23  19  13  13  –  68

West High                              12  12  16  17  –  57

Clear Creek Amana (68) – Lena Evans 26, Averie Lower 16, Brooklyn Lee 12, Lydia Keller 9, Kennedy Stratton 3, Bailey Simpson 2

West High (57) – Grace Fincham 21, Sasha Baldwin 10, Abby Neumiller 9, Lauryn Hynek 6, Kate Van Waning 5, Ava Frese 4, Josephine Austen 2

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