In the second game of a back-to-back, the Iowa City High girls basketball team (5-12) battled Dubuque Hempstead (4-14) and the Little Hawks controlled the action from tipoff.
The Little Hawks jumped out to a 29-point lead at the half and pulled away for the last 16 minutes. A 66-30 win broke a two-game skid for the City High and earned them their fifth win of the season.
“I think we really needed that one,” said City High’s Kaitlin Loria. “I feel like the last couple of games for us have been really tense…I just feel like we really needed this game to kind of loosen up, have more fun.”
City High had a tough stretch heading into Tuesday’s game. They dropped six out of their last seven games to start 2024. But everything clicked for them on both sides of the floor Tuesday.
Loria— who entered Tuesday averaging 10.6 points and 6.3 rebounds per game— contributed a team-high 18 points.
Following a scoreless first quarter, the City High freshman stepped up. Her aggressiveness proved to be the difference maker on the offensive end.
“She has the quietest big games because hers is just hard work,” said City High coach Lynsey Barnard. “I’m interested to know how many of her scores came off of sprinting the floor or getting an offensive rebound and putting it back up. That’s the dirty work that a lot of those best players get, and she does that and she’s not afraid of it.”
Other City High starters had a good day too. Tessa Driscoll—City High’s 3-point specialist— scored 17 points which included five buckets from long range. Emmy McComas finished with 12 points.
The 66 points the Little Hawks tallied on Tuesday marked the second-most for the program this season.
“It just kind of flowed tonight,” Driscoll said. “I felt like everything that we’ve been trying to put together the past five games we’ve had in a row just all came together.”
The Little Hawks didn’t let the Mustangs breathe on the defensive end. They forced turnovers, tipped balls, stuffed the passing lanes and grabbed defensive rebounds to create offensive opportunities.
City High limited Dubuque Hempstead to 30 points—the least allowed by the Little Hawks this season.
“We told them ‘Even if we can’t put a bunch of points on the board, we have to play defense and that has to be the thing that we hang our hats on’ and they bought into that,” Barnard said. “I think when we get rebounds, we’re a pretty good defensive team and I think we did that tonight.”