Mar 05

State semifinals: Remembering Dinsdale, Part 1

Posted on Tuesday, March 5, 2013, at 3:20 PM by Jeff

While 2013 is the first appearance of the consolidated North Tama County Community School District in the state boys’ basketball tournament, more than 60 years ago tiny Dinsdale almost lived its own version of the Hoosiers story twice.

In Iowa in the early 1950s, basketball teams were split into classes AA, A, and B. All of them were combined for the postseason and winnowed into a 16-team tournament held at the Iowa Fieldhouse in Iowa City. The Daily Iowan, the U of I student newspaper, covered the games and the papers are available online.

In 1950, Dinsdale’s entire high school enrollment was 47 students (27 boys), but the Red Devils were playing on the same terms as the Davenport Blue Devils, with nearly 2000 high schoolers.

1950TourneyList
State tournament teams as listed in the Daily Iowan, March 21, 1950.

Dinsdale beat Montezuma 39-34 and then Atlantic 49-47 to reach the semifinals. The contest with Davenport was anything but. The Blue Devils led 26-8 at halftime and overwhelmed the Red Devils 71-22 — but the next day Davenport did the same thing to Ankeny, winning the state championship 67-28. It would be the first of three straight titles for Davenport.

Then as now, the boys’ tournament had consolation games. Winfield broke away in the third quarter and beat Dinsdale 50-45. Dinsdale finished the season with a record of 34-4, the fourth-best team in the state.

For Davenport to finish that championship three-peat, the Blue Devils would have to play the Dinsdale Red Devils again. The second time wouldn’t be so easy.

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Mar 04

North Tama 47, Ankeny Christian 45

Posted on Monday, March 4, 2013, at 9:14 PM by Jeff

North Tama overcame 10 first-half turnovers, a 10-point halftime deficit, and under 50 percent free-throw shooting to defeat Ankeny Christian Academy 47-45 Monday in the first round of the boys’ state basketball tournament.

When the Redhawks’ Mitchell Boerm made the first basket of the fourth quarter to tie the game at 34, it was the first tie since 10-10. Skyler Kvidera’s free throw less than 40 seconds later gave the third-seeded Redhawks their first lead of the game. However, North Tama failed to score a field goal in the last 4:37, enabling the sixth-seeded Eagles to go on mini-scoring runs and bring the game down to the final seconds.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Mitchell Boerm misses a free throw with 2.5 seconds left. NT was 2 for 8 on free throws in the last 30 seconds.

(end objective reporting)

Wow. That first half was chock-full of mistakes, and they started immediately after the opening tip. ACA coolly dropped in three-point shots and free throws throughout the first half, and it appeared very likely that NT was going to make an unscheduled exit. But the Redhawks chipped away at the deficit in the third quarter, and kept playing hard.

The semifinal opponent will be defending champion Boyden-Hull, the westernmost team North Tama has ever played in a state tournament. The previous record holder was Tri-Center of Neola, which beat NT 10-6 in the 1986 Class 2A baseball semifinal.

Box score. More coverage: Des Moines Register, Waterloo Courier, Cedar Rapids Gazette, WHO, Marshalltown Times-Republican.

On a related note, the ISU women overcame a 13-point early-second-half deficit to beat Oklahoma State by three. The operative word for today’s basketball action: astonishing.

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Mar 04

‘The exact same measurements’

Posted on Monday, March 4, 2013, at 12:43 AM by Jeff

North Tama plays Ankeny Christian at 3:45.

Related: Class 1A has smallest percentage of teams in state finals (Des Moines Register)

(Yes, the movie clip is about the state final, but this is the NT boys’ first game at the Iowa Events Center.)

(Yes, I should’ve done this last year for the girls, too.)

CORRECTION of sorts: The state tournament court is 94 feet long. High school courts are 84 feet long. So it’s not the exact same measurements overall, just in the area near the basket. Facts get in the way of a movie reference once again.

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Mar 01

A suggestion to whoever does the state tournament broadcasts

Posted on Friday, March 1, 2013, at 12:18 PM by Jeff

In the Class 4A final Saturday night, don’t abbreviate Cedar Rapids Xavier as “C RAPIDS” like Thursday night. Call it “CR XAVIER” or “XAVIER” if limited to eight characters. I don’t know if this applies to the scoreboards at the game as well.

(It was especially odd considering that Sioux City Bishop Heelan was listed as “B HEELAN” in the same game.)

(UPDATE 3/4: They didn’t change it.)

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Mar 01

Traer is the winner in final storm totals

Posted on Friday, March 1, 2013, at 12:57 AM by Jeff

The National Weather Service’s compilation of results from the snowfall lists Traer at 16 inches, 15.5 near the 63/96 intersection, and 14 near Evansdale and State Center.

For a piece of visual confirmation, see this picture from Tricia Detje Zeis.

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Feb 28

Villisca-Corning: Simple name wasn’t even an option?

Posted on Thursday, February 28, 2013, at 12:29 PM by Jeff

Back in August 2011, I wrote about the potential of sharing/a merger between the Corning and Villisca school districts. Later that week, Texas A&M announced it was abandoning the Big 12 and my attention went elsewhere.

This week, that issue resurfaced, after I read that Villisca’s girls’ basketball team lost in the state tournament. It turns out that Corning and Villisca postponed sharing for a year because of time issues. Much of the prep work was done in early 2012.

From this article in the Red Oak Express, when it came to new names, it appears putting the two towns together somehow missed the cut. Villisca students proposed five names, none of which were Corning-Villisca or Villisca-Corning.

Then the school boards went along with that, and chose “Southwest Valley.”

I prefer districts that tell you where they are — cities, counties, rivers* — rather than vague approximations. Since only two names are involved in this case, it would have been very simple. (Flip a coin, or say it a few dozen times out loud to see what sounds better, or put the town without the high school first to try to ease the sting.)

A feasibility study regarding the merger runs 60 pages (PDF), which gives you some idea of just how complex and detailed discussions about merging two school districts can be.

*Not counting West Fork. The name should specify which river.

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Feb 27

15 inches of snow in Traer (Updated to 16)

Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2013, at 12:48 PM by Jeff

snowfall_022713

Waterloo set a record for the day.

(Image from Iowa Environmental Mesonet. Image at link changes with each snowfall.)

UPDATE: Another map with better gradients from the National Weather Service.

The girls’ state basketball tournament was permanently moved a week earlier in 2008 — from the first full week of March to the last days of February — but Mother Nature appears to have compensated.

UPDATE 2: KCRG meteorologist Justin Gehrts writes in a blog post:

What’s stunning is that no data indicated that it would happen. In fact, Monday’s data showed that Waterloo had a decent shot at getting no snow whatsoever, and the highest computer forecast was for about a half-inch of snow there.

UPDATE 3: Got another inch after the flurries kept coming Wednesday. See new post.

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Feb 26

39 minutes, 54 seconds

Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2013, at 1:15 PM by Jeff

Prologue: 19 minutes, 55 seconds

39 minutes, 54 seconds (:06)

Iowa State 79, Kansas 76
Iowa State 76, Oklahoma State 76
Iowa State 71, Texas 68
Iowa State 90, Kansas 88


(4:27 mark of video)


(2:09 mark of video)

40/45/50 minutes

Kansas 97, Iowa State 89 (OT)
Oklahoma State 78, Iowa State 76
Texas 89, Iowa State 87 (2OT)
Kansas 108, Iowa State 96 (OT)

Also: Reactions to the second Kansas game from Bryce Miller and Brent Blum.

Videos linked from YouTube.

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Feb 26

Not again

Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2013, at 12:45 AM by Jeff

My Saturday irrational exuberance exacts a high price.

Only Iowa State could hit 17 3-pointers and 22 straight free throws at home and lose.

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Feb 25

That’s why he looks familiar!

Posted on Monday, February 25, 2013, at 3:52 PM by Jeff

On this year’s Jeopardy Tournament of Champions is “a high school world history teacher from Chicago, Illinois, Colby Burnett.”

His style made me think I had seen him somewhere before — and I have.

Burnett was on Northwestern’s Quiz Bowl team at the 2003 NAQT Division I Intercollegiate Tournament in Los Angeles. I was on Iowa State’s D-II team that year. We would have attended some of the same tournaments in the Midwest.

That makes two people connected to my quiz bowl days who I’ve seen on Jeopardy. The other is TOC winner Michael Falk, who I did Quiz Bowl with at ISU.

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