Iowa City, IA- Iowa City High has now been the setting for heartbreak and triumph fo4 #4 Burlington Notre Dame in back-to-back years. This season the Nikes will celebrate the latter after defeating Calamus-Wheatland 63-53 last night for the Class 1A Substate 5 championship.
(Picture from Notre Dame Athletics Facebook)
Along with the victory, the Nikes will be heading back to Des Moines for the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s Boys’ State Basketball Tournament for the fourth time in their program’s history and for the first time in 15 years, two years before Dan Kies took over as head coach.
“Yeah, fantastic for me, and I was watching at that time, and it’s just been a battle” said coach Kies. “I mean, we’ve been close to getting there a couple times, and just to get over the hump is great, and I think it’ll be great for the school, great for the community to see another team from our area to get back there.”
(The Kies Family Celebrating with the Banner)
A year ago, the Nikes were turned away in the substate championship by North Linn. Though with the bulk of the starting lineup returning, Notre Dame was ready to run it back and no one seemed more determined than Shay Stephens,
“I mean it’s great. I’ve spent my last four years working for this moment so it’s really big for me and really big for our team.”
In a battle between two 23-2 squads, Calamus-Wheatland, who posted a losing record the previous season and had not advanced past the second round of the postseason in five of the last six seasons, appeared outmatched at the beginning of the game with Notre Dame jumping passing lanes and Stephens connecting for the first five points of the game.
That trend would continue for the remainder of the first quarter with Chase Klatt, the Warriors’ leading scorer, mustering a couple of tough shots to fall. Nevertheless, the Nikes exited the first quarter leading 18 to 7, much like they had for most of the season.
Despite scoring 63 points, the Nikes struggled to shoot the ball from beyond the arc with only three three-pointers in the contest—their first time hitting less than four since their 7th game of the season. Nonetheless, the Nikes won because of their physicality and clutch shooting.
“Yeah, I mean, offensively we weren’t great” said coach Kies. “We missed some shots we should have made here and there in the half court. We, you know, nothing special. We did play well in transition, got some deflections, got some steals, but I thought the biggest thing we did was we competed on the glass and with a team that’s a really good rebounding team. I mean, they average a lot of offensive boards, so that was a focus. It was like, hey, we got a rebound like, and we’ve been a good rebounding team all year, so I thought that was huge is the rebounding side of things.”
Stephens and Eli Oleson kept the Nikes afloat in the second half, especially Oleson, who scored 12 of his 18 points in the second half. Though helping supply that physicality was another senior in Payne Prottsman, who finished the night with seven points. Him and Oleson were on the state baseball team for the summer of 2023, still the special feeling never goes away,
“Oh, it’s always a special feeling to be able to go up to Des Moines and baseball for Carroll, but going to Des Moines for basketball, we haven’t done that in a while. So, it’s very exciting to be able to go and show what Burlington, Iowa can do.”
This group will represent southeast Iowa in Des Moines on Tuesday, March 10th, as the #4-seed, meaning they will be the home team when they face off against #5 (22-3) Bellevue, the Substate 3 champion, at 3:45 pm. When asked what made this team special coach Kies, Prottsman, and Stephens had a similar answer, yet Stephens was the most succinct,
“I mean chemistry is our biggest thing. We all love each other, we’re all great friends so I think that’s the biggest thing. It ties in our defense, ties in our offense so got to have chemistry and be a good team.”
With the hard part behind them, its now time to have some fun, which should not be too difficult for this squad according to coach Kies,
“… They don’t all hang around all the time, but just seeing them together, they know how to relax together and have a good time and kind of push the basketball to the back of their minds. So, it’s a pretty light-hearted group, and it kind of makes that fun.”
KILJ 105.5 FM, kilj.com, will be on the call with the pregame show at 3:15 pm.
Notre Dame Scoring: Shay Stephens and Eli Oleson 18 points, Griffin Kies 12 points, Payne Prottsman 7 points, L.J. Harris 6 points, Kellen Porter 2 points