Ankeny senior Carson Johnson was determined to end his high school career at the boys’ state basketball tournament.
His teammates played a huge role in helping him get back to Wells Fargo Arena.
Lio Aguirre scored a game-high 22 points, Cash Schoolen had all eight of his points in the first few minutes, and the eighth-ranked Hawks cruised to a 64-41 victory over No. 10 Ankeny Centennial in a Class 4A substate final on Tuesday at Southeast Polk.
“It feels great. We’ve worked all year for this,” said Johnson, who had 17 points and three assists in the win. “We just knew we had to come ready to play, and it feels so great seeing all the work pay off and get back to the Well.”
Ankeny (17-6) has won seven straight games since losing to defending state champion Valley on Jan. 30. The Hawks advanced to the Class 4A tournament for the third time in five years.
Johnson and Aguirre were both sophomores on the Ankeny squad that lost to Johnston in the quarterfinals in 2022.
“We’re definitely ready to shock some people at Wells,” said Aguirre. “I really think we’ve put the right people together on our team. We have me and Carson as kind of the main leaders, my little brother Rio has stepped up, and everybody is really playing their role the right way.”
That includes Schoolen, who surpassed his 7.8 scoring average with eight consecutive points in the first quarter. He made a pair of 3-pointers as the Hawks erased Centennial’s early 2-0 lead and moved ahead for good.
“I knew I was going to play confident,” said Schoolen, who was 5-of-18 from behind the arc entering the game. “I knew they were going to try to play me in the lane–they know I’m a driver so they’re going to let me shoot the 3 ball, and I took advantage of that.”
The Jaguars closed the gap to 13-11 at the end of the first quarter, but Aguirre then took over. He made a pair of treys in a 10-0 run that allowed Ankeny to build a 23-11 advantage midway through the second period.
“I was feeling it,” said Aguirre, who went 8-of-11 from the field and 5-of-6 from 3-point range. “After the first two went in, I knew I had to keep shooting and just shoot until I miss.”
Centennial (17-7) could get no closer than three points the rest of the way. Another 3-pointer by Aguirre late in the third quarter extended the Hawks’ lead to 42-36 and ignited a 25-5 flurry to close out the game.
Aguirre also had seven rebounds and three assists.
“Lio played great,” Johnson said. “We all know what he can do on any given night. We believe in him so much, and just seeing him come out and play like that, it was great.”
Johnson scored nine of his points in the fourth quarter, seven of them at the free-throw line. He was helped off the court after taking a hard fall on an and-one with 1 minute 35 seconds left, but was able to return shortly thereafter.
“I landed on (Centennial’s Joey Oakie) and my knee bent really far back, and he landed on it too,” Johnson said. “But I’m good.”
Ankeny scored more than half of its points from 3-point range, going 11-of-17 from behind the arc. Rio Aguirre, who contributed 10 points, and Luke Anderson each added a pair of treys.
“The defensive schemes that we had set in place, we weren’t able to go to a couple of them because coming out of the gate they had somebody hit two 3s and he had hit only five all year,” Centennial coach Bob Fontana said of Schoolen. “And then Lio obviously was knocking down 3s. That changed a couple of the things we wanted to do.
“From about early in the second quarter on, I thought we did a poor job of contesting 3s. We gave them too many good looks, and they made us pay,” he added.
Oakie scored 12 points to lead Centennial, which shot just 34.6 percent from the field. The Jaguars’ leading scorer, Luke Winkel, was held to a season-low seven points.
“Knowing Winkel he’s going to shoot a lot and he’s going to hit a lot from behind the arc, so holding him down was huge for us,” Schoolen said.
Ankeny also forced the Jaguars into 11 turnovers. Centennial had turned it over just twice in a 64-52 triumph over the Hawks on Dec. 19.
“We had a great game plan coming in, and we knew they would too,” said Johnson, who scored 38 points in a 76-63 victory over the Jaguars earlier this month. “We knew it would be a tough battle, but if we just played together we’d get (the win).”
Ankeny moved up to the No. 5 seed in the Class 4A tournament due to a few upsets in the substate finals. No. 3 Sioux City East, No. 5 Waukee and No. 7 Iowa City West each failed to qualify for state.
The Hawks will play No. 6 Dubuque Senior (21-2), the No. 4 seed, in the quarterfinals on March 6 at 12:15 p.m. The Rams rallied from a 27-22 halftime deficit to beat No. 9 Pleasant Valley, 49-46, on Tuesday.
Ankeny was the No. 6 seed in 2020 when it won the Class 4A title by defeating three higher-seeded teams.
“We can go all the way,” Johnson said. “We know we can compete with anyone on any given night. We just have to play together.”
