Hlas: I.C. West changes cast, but dominance continues

CEDAR RAPIDS - University of Iowa wrestling under Dan Gable won 15 NCAA team titles. That was a dynasty. The Ming Dynasty, which ruled China for 276 years, was a dynasty.

So we won't call Iowa City West boys' basketball a dynasty. But the way things are going ...

The Trojans are vying for their fourth-straight Class 4A state-title, a feat no team has pulled off. They are 91-3 since the start of that run. This year's team improved to 16-0 after its 76-56 win at Cedar Rapids Xavier Tuesday, and has had just one game closer than 10 points.

Its top six players are three juniors, two sophomores and a senior. 'Really, only two of them played a lot last year,” West Coach Steve Bergman said.

But talent, size, athleticism and basketball bloodlines make for a handful.

Four Trojan starters are between 6-foot-4 and 6-7. The tallest is the lone senior, David DiLeo. He, like most of his teammates, is good at more than just basketball. He and Karl Wenzel won the Class 2A boys' doubles title last spring at the state tennis tournament.

DiLeo is the team's leading 3-point shooter, as he demonstrated by popping in three treys with in a 2:25 stretch of the third quarter Tuesday.

DiLeo is the son of Kay and Frank DiLeo. Kay was an All-Missouri Valley player at Drake and the women's basketball head coach at Indiana State. Frank was an Iowa assistant coach under Tom Davis and a longtime scout with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Sophomore guard Connor McCaffery is 6-5, leads his team in assists, and goes inside and out fluidly. His mother, Margaret McCaffery, was a prominent player at Notre Dame. His father, Fran McCaffery, will be his college coach in 2017.

Another soph, Tanner Lohaus, is the son of former Iowa/NBA player Brad Lohaus.

They and fellow starters Devontae Lane and Wali Parks all average between 10.7 and 15.9 points per game.

Competing against West, said Xavier Coach Ryan Luehrsmann, 'is a very tall order. Obviously, they're extremely talented and they've got four or five guys that can take over a game. That's really rare to see at the high school level.”

They were nothing special in the first half Tuesday, with careless ball handling. A fired-up Xavier team executed and shot well to trail just 32-30 at halftime. The Saints scored the first four points of the third quarter to take the lead.

Then West played like West., It scored inside and out, dialed up its defense, and racked up 46 second-half points to pull away from the 8-8 Saints.

Bergman, who has coached five state-champions at West, can sound less impressed with the Trojans than anyone. Which means he is their coach, not their publicist.

'I did not recognize anything we did on offense (in the first half),” he said. 'We didn't run our motion offense, I don't think, one time. That carried to our ‘D,' and our ‘D' was not very good.

'Four or five times this year we just weren't ready to go.”

That's the coach, who has to say that stuff to counter the rest of the world telling his players they're great. But even Bergman wouldn't try to tell you his guys aren't smart, skilled and unselfish.

McCaffery seems on a track to become one of Iowa's best prep players of the decade. A 6-5 sophomore who can shoot, pass and dribble with aplomb and quickly absorb what's happening around him is, I dare say, special. His defense needs work, but you can say that about every high school sophomore player alive.

And, he's just one cog on this team.

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com