(Story by Stephen McDaniel)
If there’s one point of emphasis the Centennial boys’ basketball team wants to focus on heading into the holiday break, it’s working on closing out games.
The Jaguars went out on the road Friday and stuck with two-time reigning Class 4A champion Valley through three quarters, but the wheels fell off for Centennial in the fourth quarter and led to a 68-44 loss.
“We’ve got to do a better job closing out games in the fourth quarter and working on late game situations,” said Centennial coach Bob Fontana. “It’s a six-point game with a couple minutes to go in the third quarter, and we let that get away from us.”
Friday was almost guaranteed to be a difficult matchup for an inexperienced Centennial squad going on the road against a Valley team returning a lot of talent from its state championship team.
Despite having last year’s Iowa Gatorade Player of the Year Curtis Stinson Jr. departing for a prep academy and playing without Iowa State football commit Zay Robinson, the Tigers field a team with three of their top five scorers from last season.
Yet, Valley struggled to pull away from a Centennial team looking to pull off a big upset for potentially its second victory of the season.
Valley went on a small run to turn a 10-9 game into a 17-9 lead for the Tigers when Trevin Jirak knocked down a 3-pointer in the first quarter. Centennial, led by Evan Abbott, cut into Valley’s lead and pulled it back within a possession in the second period.
Between contesting shots and outrebounding the Tigers, the Jaguars kept Valley in check and only allowed 28 first-half points. That marked one of the Tigers’ lowest first-half totals this season.
“We were playing really good defense, we were winning the rebound margin going into halftime, we were taking care of the ball, and I thought we were very efficient getting the ball side to side on offense,” Fontana said.
The Jaguars were within six points going into half and were able to find answers to Valley baskets to open up the second half. Abbott knocked down some free throws to keep it a seven-point game with 1:21 left in the third quarter.
Things took a turn for the worse for Centennial after a Cayden Clark pullup jumper with just over 7 minutes left to play.
Clark’s jumper cut the deficit to 10 points at 43-33, but the Tigers sparked a 13-0 run behind their leading scorers Kiki Deng and Jayden McGregory. Cabryn Klingner managed to break up the run with a corner 3-point goal at the 4-minute mark, but the Jaguars were already stuck in a 20-point hole.
After only being outscored 19-13 in the first quarter and 13-9 in the third quarter, the large run helped Valley outscore Centennial 27-13 in the final period.
“Even when we got some attacks on the rim, they had some big blocks…Jirak banged it,” Fontana said. “We had four or five live-ball turnovers that killed us and led to run outs for them.”
Valley improved to 5-1 in the CIML Conference and remained tied with Johnston atop the league standings. Centennial fell to 0-5 in the conference and 1-5 overall.
Still, the Jaguars are feeling optimistic with the growth of their younger, inexperienced roster coming out of their trip to Valley.
Abbott, a sophomore, led Centennial with 16 points. Clark, a junior, chipped in seven points.
Centennial is rolling with the growing pains of a new lineup and is looking to work on some things during the break to get off to a strong start once the calendar year flips to 2025.
“We’ve got a lot of kids playing their first varsity basketball, whether they’re a senior, junior or sophomore,” Fontana said. “Tonight we played two sophomores, a freshman and two juniors in the rotation, along with three of our seniors. Our kids are doing a really good job at trying to take steps forward, and I’m proud of them because of that.”
