The Ankeny Centennial girls’ basketball program made a habit of advancing to the state tournament under Scott DeJong.
It appears the Jaguars’ tradition will continue without the legendary coach.
Twelfth-ranked Centennial used a 7-0 run in the first 2 minutes of the fourth quarter to post a 40-35 victory at No. 4 Cedar Falls in a Class 5A regional final on Tuesday. The Jaguars qualified for state for the sixth consecutive year, but this will be their first trip under coach Chris Harken.
“I’ve got to give all the credit to the girls,” said Harken, who took over the program when DeJong retired at the end of last season. “They bought into our culture and our system. They worked really hard, and they deserved this win. They did a great job, and I’m very proud of them.”
Junior guard Lizzie Beam took over down the stretch, scoring 11 of her 19 points in the fourth quarter. She outdueled Drake recruit Karis Finley, who led the Tigers with 16 points and six rebounds.
“She’s a great player, but my confidence has just gone up so much this season,” said Beam. “I believed in myself.”
Beam drove for a basket with 7:23 left to put Centennial ahead for good, 30-29. She then scored again off a turnover 33 seconds later to extend the margin.
“She just carried us,” Harken said of Beam. “She was like, ‘I’m tired of this. I want to win the game.’ We found a game plan that worked for her, and she owned it and took care of it. I’m very proud of her.”
Beam scored again on a runner with 6:10 remaining to cap the 7-0 run, giving the Jaguars their largest lead of the game at 35-29. That basket followed an offensive rebound by Mylie Hatfield, who chased down the ball when teammate Rylyn Boeding missed a free throw after making her first attempt.
“We work on rebounding so hard in practice,” said Hatfield, who finished with seven boards–five of them on the offensive end. “We know that’s the key to winning, and recently it’s been showing a lot.”
After Cedar Falls closed the gap to 35-32, the Jaguars got another big basket from Beam on the ensuing possession. Hatfield missed a 3-pointer with the shot clock winding down, but Beam grabbed the rebound and put it back in with 2:15 to go.
“We knew rebounding was going to be crucial tonight,” said Harken, whose team won the battle of the boards by a 32-24 margin. “We weren’t going to get many great looks against their defense, so we had to make sure that we were fighting for rebounds to give ourselves second-chance opportunities. It worked really well tonight, especially with Mylie and Rylyn. But all of them were crashing hard tonight.”
Finley scored on a backdoor layup with 1:40 left to cut Centennial’s lead to 37-34. Mackenzie Urbanek then made the second of two free throws at the 1:07 mark to pull the Tigers within 37-35.
Once again, Beam stepped up for the Jaguars. With the shot clock winding down, she dribbled down the lane and converted a scoop shot to make it 39-35 with 31 seconds remaining.
Beam later added a free throw with 10 seconds to go to produce the final margin.
“She definitely won the game for us in that fourth quarter,” Boeding said of Beam. “Without her, we probably would not have won.”
There were seven lead changes and six ties in the game. Cedar Falls (18-5) used a 9-0 run in the first half to take an 11-5 lead, but the Jaguars later tied the score at 14-14 on a 3-pointer by Boeding with 1:58 left in the second quarter.
After Cedar Falls’ Mackenzie Sagers answered with a 3-pointer of her own, Beam scored on a drive to pull her team within 17-16 at the break.
“We all believed in ourselves, and we all knew we could do it,” Hatfield said. “We just worked hard, and we did it.”
Hatfield drew the primary defensive assignment against Finley, who scored eight of her points in the third quarter. Finley made a pair of free throws after being fouled with less than a second on the clock to give the Tigers their final lead at 29-28.
“I don’t even know,” Hatfield said of her defensive strategy. “I just kind of went with it. I knew it was going to be a hard task. She’s obviously an amazing player, and we had really good help defense all the way around. We really just worked as a team. It was not a one-person effort at all.”
Finley went 5-of-6 from the field, but she also committed three turnovers. Her teammates, meanwhile, combined to shoot just 7-of-30–including 3-of-20 from 3-point range.
“She’s got some good role players around her, but (Finley) really leads the whole team,” Harken said. “We knew we had to contain her.”
Boeding matched Finley with eight points in the third quarter. The senior forward recorded a double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds, despite battling an illness.
Boeding and Beam are the only Jaguars with state tournament experience who played on Tuesday. Beam also had 10 boards for a double-double.
“Oh my gosh, it feels so good especially since I feel like nobody believed in us, but we believed in ourselves and we knew that we could do it,” said Boeding, who added two assists and a steal. “It just feels so good.”
The win was Centennial’s fourth in a row and gave the Jaguars (12-11) a winning record for the first time this season. They are guaranteed to finish with at least a .500 mark.
Centennial drew the No. 8 seed for the Class 5A state tournament and will play No. 1 Johnston (24-0) in the quarterfinals on Monday. Tip-off at the Casey’s Center is at 10 a.m.
Johnston, the two-time defending champion, is looking to complete a third consecutive perfect season. The Dragons extended their winning streak to 76 games with a 91-53 win over Indianola on Tuesday.
“We’re playing loose and confident, so we’ll go out there and give it our best effort and whatever happens happens,” Harken said.
This will be the third meeting in the last four years between the CIML Conference rivals at the state tournament. Johnston posted a 42-35 win the semifinals in 2023 and also won a semifinal matchup last year, 61-42.
The Dragons also won both meetings during the regular season, 87-53 and 72-32.
“We’ve played them twice already, so we kind of know what’s going on,” Hatfield said. “Who knows (what will happen)?”
In the last meeting on Feb. 10, the Jaguars trailed by just 8-6 at the end of the first quarter before Johnston pulled away.
“We competed with them well in the first half the last time we played them, so I know we’ll be ok,” Boeding said.
