No. 7-ranked Nodaway Valley tops Tigers 77-42, will face East Mills Saturday in Atlantic for 1A Substate 7
By Drew Herron - AJ/NT Sports / Feb. 27, 2014
STUART – Basketball is mostly a game of runs.
On Thursday night in Stuart, No. 7-ranked Nodaway Valley
used a lot of them to bury Griswold 77-42 in the Class 1A District 13 Final and
move one step closer to a third straight trip to the State Tournament in Des
Moines.
The Tigers led after the opening quarter (16-13), but to
start the second, Nodaway Valley contrived a tremendously burdensome 1-3-1-zone
press on Griswold that effectively turned the tide in the Wolverines’ favor for
good.
Nodaway Valley rode a 15-0 run to reclaim the lead
permanently (then 28-16), and held Griswold scoreless for the first
six-and-a-half minutes of the second frame. By the time Tigers’ forward Walker
Mundorf knocked down a jumper and finally broke through with the team’s first
points of the second quarter, Griswold was already in a double-digit hole.
It was a difficult stretch for the Tigers, one in which they
could not recover from.
“We played really well in the first quarter as far as
executing what we wanted to do both offensively and defensively,” Tigers’ coach
Chad Rodgers says. “I’m real proud of the effort and the understanding of what
it is Nodaway Valley is trying to do. Then, all of a sudden, we just kind of
went blank in the second quarter. You could see it in their eyes…we just
mentally checked out for about half that quarter.”
That 1-3-1-zone press is nothing new to the Tigers. In fact,
Griswold used a similar brand of it to smash Exira-EHK into submission five
days earlier on the tournament trail.
But the flavor brought by Nodaway Valley, with its speed,
athleticism and deception simply flooded the Tigers’ efforts to effectively run
its offense.
Nodaway Valley dictated the tempo with its press and
transition, but the Wolverines also stretched the court, scoring from the
outside as well as in.
Sophomore guard Jackson Lamb, who would finish the night
with 27 points to lead all scorers, hit four 3-pointers in the opening half. In
the paint, senior TJ Bower finished with 18, and Zach Plymesser chipped in 11
points from the wing.
All of it spread the Tigers thin, but Rodgers is especially
peeved that his team didn’t do a better job at containing Lamb.
“Lamb is such a good shooter and we gave him way too many
open looks,” coach Rodgers says. “It’s disappointing that we didn’t do a better
job of identifying him, because he was the No. 1 (priority) on our game plan.”
After outscoring Griswold 24-4 in the second quarter, the
gap continued to widen in the second half. At the close of the third, NV went
ahead by more than 20 points, and by the end of the fourth, both sides would
empty its bench as the running clock was enacted with about a minute-and-a-half
remaining.
With the victory, Nodaway Valley improves its record to 22-2
on the season. The Wolverines now advance to Saturday’s Substate 7 final
against East Mills (22-3) at Atlantic High School. Thursday night marked the
ninth District final for Nodaway Valley in the past 11 years.
Forgive the Wolverines for being spoiled perhaps, but these
District titles have become old hat.
“We were pretty calm in the locker room, we had a little
celebration,” NV coach Darrell Burmeister says. “But we’re not here to hand out
medals or cut down nets tonight or anything like that. It’s our tradition, if
we win the District, we try to stay focused because we know we are one step
away.”
No doubt about it, NV has been about as tradition-rich as
any other 1A squad in southwest Iowa over the past decade.
Griswold, who played in its first District final game since
2004, just doesn’t yet have that swagger the Wolverines have built. That
confidence within the program can often pay dividends at this point of the
season when nerves flair.
“It especially helps with the mental aspect of things,”
coach Rodgers says. “Our guys are here hoping to win, they get here and they
expect to win. Once you get to a point where you put together multiple winning
seasons and you get to experience more of these meaningful games, then your
players begin to believe in the challenge. We’re just not there yet.”
Game Scoring (02/27)
GRISWOLD (15-9): Tyrel Peters 3, Jacob Maass 6, Caleb Schaaf
6, Walker Mundorf 5, Grant Haynes 5, Aaron Metheny 4, Drake Rieber 3 Free Throws: 7/14
NODAWAY VALLEY (22-2): Jackson Lamb 27, TJ Bower 18, Zach
Plymess 11, Caleb Mueller 9, Delson Grantam 7, Nathan Venteicher 3, Mason
Clarke 2 Free Throws: 23/34
#griswoldtigers #iahsbkb
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