It wasn’t pretty, but the Ankeny Centennial boys’ basketball team finally earned its first victory against Waukee Northwest on Tuesday.
There were seven ties and six lead changes before the eighth-ranked Jaguars pulled away down the stretch for a 57-53 win at Northwest. They broke away from a 49-49 tie with an 8-4 run over the final 2 minutes 57 seconds.
“The mark of a good team is when you don’t play your best basketball and you go on the road and win in this league,” said Centennial coach Bob Fontana. “And sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good. But we were good at the right time–at the end of the game. And we’ll take the win.”
Luke Winkel had 23 points, four assists and two steals as Centennial improved to 5-2 in the CIML Conference and 7-2 overall. The Wolves’ records dropped to 2-5 and 4-5.
Northwest had won all five previous meetings in the series by an average of 20.4 points, including a 55-37 victory in last year’s Class 4A quarterfinals.
“It was a good win, even though we didn’t play our best,” said Centennial guard Connor Welsch, who finished with 10 points. “We knew coming off Christmas break we’d have some (rust), like at the start of the season.”
The Jaguars took the lead for good, 51-49, when Will Smith converted a Northwest turnover into a layup with just under 3 minutes to go. It was his only basket of the game.
After Winkel made the second of two free throws with 2:36 left, neither team scored for the next 2-plus minutes. Winkel then converted two more free throws to push the margin to 54-49 with 32.6 seconds remaining.
Northwest eventually closed the gap to 55-53 on a basket by Luke Hart with 10 seconds left, but the Wolves then fouled Welsch on the ensuing inbounds pass. He made both free throws with 7.9 seconds to go to seal the win.
“We’ve always got to have confidence at the free-throw line, so that was good,” Welsch said.
Northwest played without leading scorer Grant Tigges, who was averaging 16.5 points. But the Wolves stayed in the game by making 10-of-29 3-pointers (34.5 percent).
“They’ve got some good young kids,” Fontana said. “We’d get a four- or five-point lead, and we just couldn’t pull away from them.”
Hart scored 10 of his 16 points in the first quarter. Landon Davis racked up nine points, 10 rebounds and six blocks for the Wolves.
Sandro Bilic went 4-of-6 from behind the arc and had 14 points. He made back-to-back treys to open the second quarter, giving Northwest a 23-22 lead.
“(Bilic) was averaging like 5.5 points and shooting 28 percent from 3,” Fontana said.
Welsch converted a 3-point play with 2.4 seconds left to give the Jaguars a 32-29 halftime lead, but Northwest eventually forged another tie, 44-44, when Bilic made another 3-pointer to open the final period.
“They’re always a good shooting team,” Welsch said of the Wolves. “But we didn’t play very good defense, so that helped them quite a bit. They had some open shots.”
There were two more ties before Centennial finally took control of the game. Chase Schutty added eight points and 10 rebounds for the Jaguars.
“I thought we were like a rollercoaster all night,” Fontana said. “We played well for a couple minutes and then we’d have a couple bad minutes. It was up and down, so we need to work at being more consistent.”
The Jaguars will travel to Southeast Polk on Friday for another conference game against the Rams, who are 1-6 in the league and 3-6 overall after falling to Johnston, 71-60, on Tuesday. Tip-off has been moved to 6:15 p.m., with the girls’ varsity game to follow.
