Douglas Miles

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Liberty High has found a little something at the right time of the season.

After beginning the boys’ basketball season with losses in six of their first seven games, the Lightning have struck for five wins in their last six contests.

“I think a lot of it has to do with our practices,” Liberty High coach Ryan Kelly said after the Lightning edged rival Iowa City High, 53-52, in a Mississippi Valley Conference game Friday night at the new City High gymnasium. “We have got a ton of guys that probably can go in and play. If you have looked at our box scores, we have played 10, 12 guys in almost every game. So we have got a bunch of different guys that we can throw in positions. We come to practice every day and they challenge each other. They battle. They fight.”

For Liberty High (6-7, 4-3 MVC), the win over City High represented significant growth from the Jan. 4 matchup between the two teams in which the Lightning surrendered 82 points and lost by 10 on their home floor.

“That first game gave us a lot of motivation to come out the second game and go harder,” Liberty junior guard/forward Christian Barney said. “And we came out and did that.”

Barney, senior forward Griffin Kraft and 6-foot-7 sophomore shot blocker Gage Kampman have spearheaded a strong defensive effort for Liberty High, which has held each of its last six opponents to less than 60 points.

City High managed just 21 first-half points, and Barney drilled a desperation three-point heave from inside the half-court line that beat the horn and sent Liberty to the halftime locker room with a 29-21 advantage.

“We were hyped in the locker room,” said Barney, who finished with seven points. “It was nice. As soon as I released it, I knew it was going in.”

With the score tied at 36-36 in the third quarter, Liberty junior guard Da’Shon Fisher started a 13-5 Liberty burst with an old-fashioned three-point play and a breakaway dunk.

“I think that was a really big sequence for us,” Fisher said. “Because it really boosted our energy and confidence. I feel like whenever I can make a play, our team feeds off that energy and we just get better all around.”

Fisher led all scorers with 18 points, highlighted by a flurry of athletic dunks that elicited a significant amount of noise from the noticeable contingent of Liberty High students that made the trip down from North Liberty.

“It is funny,” Kelly said. “We sit there as a staff on the side. We’re like, ‘What should we call?’ And then we look out there and he decides to use his athleticism and go make a play. So it is kind of nice to have that every now and then, when you have a guy that can just go get a bucket.”

City High (4-9, 1-5) rallied in the closing minutes with an 11-2 surge and regained the lead with less than two minutes to go at 52-51 with the third three-point basket of the game from reserve guard David Pope.

Barney responded with the go-ahead basket on the next possession and the Liberty High defense bowed up and denied City High’s last-gasp attempts to win it, including a shot from the paint at the horn.

“They were in the bonus, so if we foul they go to the free-throw line and shoot two,” Kelly said. “The idea was to contain and force into a pull-up jumper, which is what we did. That was kind of the game plan going into that last possession.”

Junior guard Luke Ramsey chipped in 10 points for Liberty High, which hosts No. 6 Cedar Falls Saturday at 3:30.

“It gives us a lot more confidence than what we had,” Barney said. “Going into the postseason, we are going to be good.”

Shamar Benton and Jamari Newson each scored 14 points for City High, which has lost six games in a row.

Liberty High   12 17  12  12  –  53

City High         12   9  15  16  –  52

Liberty High (53) – Christian Barney 2 2-4 7, Griffin Kraft 0 1-6 1, Luke Ramsey 3 2-2 10, Graham Beckman 0 0-0 0, Da’Shon Fisher 8 2-3 18, Trey Hughes 2 0-0 6, TJ Tellis 1 2-4 4, Gage Kampman 1 3-6 5, Thomas Ksobiech 1 0-0 2, Totals 18 12-25 53.

City High (52) – Shamar Benton 6 0-0 14, Jovan Harris 2 0-0 4, Darren Richardson 3 0-1 7, Jamari Newson 5 4-6 14, Jay Kennedy 0 0-0 0, Matt Schaeckenbach 1 0-0 2, Taeshon McDaniels 0 0-2 0, Evan Lampe 1 0-0 2, David Pope 3 0-0 9, Totals 21 4-9 52.

Three-point goals – Liberty High 5 (Hughes 2, Ramsey 2, Barney 1); City High 6 (Benton 2, Pope 3, Richardson 1). Fouled out – Richardson.

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