Washington season ends at No. 7 Oskaloosa

OSKALOOSA - There is an old saying among basketball coaches that height is the one thing they can't teach.

Washington High School's boys basketball season came to an end Thursday at the hands of No. 7 Oskaloosa in an Iowa High School Athletic Association Class 3A Substate 5 semifinal as the Indians' 6-foot-10 Cole Henry went over 1,000 points in his career with 25 points against the Demons in a 78-53 victory.

Oskaloosa's 7-foot Xavier Foster had just five points, but 6-foot-5 Rian Yates had 15 points on five triples, Tyler Miller had 13 points and Austin Hafner had 11.

'It is a case where you pick your poison,” Washington coach Collin Stark said. 'We tried to pick and choose who we wanted to shoot the ball. Their role players had to score and they did. You just try to play the percentage game and they won the percentage game.”

Washington started strong with leads of 7-4 and 9-8 but trailed 19-13 at the end of the first quarter.

Henry scored 10 of his points in the second quarter for a 41-29 halftime advantage. Often times he rebounded his own missed shot and scored. Five of his 10 rebounds were offensive. Foster had 11 rebounds and five blocks. Yates had 10 assists.

'We try to get our posts good touches and then kick it back out,” Oskaloosa coach Ryan Parker said. 'We want to feed through the post with Cole or Xavier and then we get a good open look out of that. That is our main goal because we do have good shooters with Yates and Hafner.”

The Indians made 12 3-pointers in the game (six in each half) to four for the Demons.

'I wish we would've shot the ball a little bit better,” Stark said. 'They are a tough team. You have to play your best to give yourself a chance to win. I wouldn't say that we played our worst, but we did not have as good of a shooting game as we have had before. When you have 7-foot and 6-10 coming on you, it's tough to focus on your shot. We know shooting from the outside is just not our strength.”

The Demons tried various defenses on the Indians, to no avail.

'We have seen a lot of different defenses all year long, doubling the post sort of like (Washington's Luke) Turner did tonight, but we have seen it so many times that we were able to get layups out of it,” Parker said. 'I thought that was the difference.”

At least four of Miller's baskets came from backdoor cuts for easy layups.

'My biggest thing was we had talked about that backside and we had to sink down to cover it,” Stark said. 'I wanted us to give up that three or 15-footer and not the layup. We had two days to prepare, maybe if we had a week I think our plans would've been a little bit different.”

The Demons came out of halftime energized and playing hard but could not get the ball through the rim. Two series of play resulted in offensive rebounds, then a steal and a cuased turnover, but Osky ended up getting a triple from Yates for the first points of the second half. Oskaloosa outscored Washington 24-5 in the third frame.

'Defensively our game plan was to make somebody else beat us other than their bigs,” Stark said. 'We tweaked a few things in the second half that worked a little bit better, but by then it was too late.”

Oskaloosa (15-5) advances to play No. 5 Fairfield (18-3) Monday at Mt. Pleasant. Fairfield defeated Mt. Pleasant 51-30 Thursday.

'I think Fairfield has the bigs to potentially match up with them,” Stark said. 'I think (Oskaloosa) tend(s) to be careless with the basketball, but they were locked in and didn't have many turnovers tonight.”

The Demons finishe the season with a 9-10 record, the most wins in a season since the 2011-12 went 13-9.

'Our guys work hard,” Stark said. 'I feel for our seniors. I think this was a successful year and I definitely don't want it to end.”

Luke Turner scored 15 points for the Demons. Trevor Quigley had nine, Kasen Bailey scored seven, Ethan Hunt had six. Cade Hennigan and Kolten Hinrichsen had four apiece. Lucas Kroll scored five and Brock Sobaski had three.

Trashaun Willis sat out with an injury.

'I don't want to say it would be a difference if we had our 6-6 guy in there, but I think it would've been,” Stark said. 'We had to use our best defender on one of their bigs. Cade has the jumping ability but 6-1 against 7-foot and 6-10, it is tough. You don't usually see that in high school and they have it on the same team.”