Metro Sports Report

Kirkwood softball opens in Minnesota

The Kirkwood softball team is heading north this Friday to escape the cold and snow instead of heading south to begin the 2015 campaign, but there's no reason to question their sanity.

The ninth-ranked Eagles will be playing two games Friday inside a bubble in Rochester, Minn., against NIACC and Rochester Tech.

"The good thing about it is, it will be dry but it probably will be 40 degrees," Kirkwood Coach Joe Yegge said Wednesday as the snow fell in Cedar Rapids.

This will be a long one-day excursion for the Eagles. They'll leave for Rochester Friday morning, play their games at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., then turn around and come home.

Kirkwood returns eight experienced players who helped the Eagles finish 52-8 last season, but three of the top four pitchers are freshmen who are just starting their college careers.

Cougars fall to Tigers in final second

The Cedar Falls Tigers worked on a "junk" zone defense for two days in preparation for the Class 5A regional finals against Kennedy, but Cedar Falls Coach Gregg Groen did not want to use it until the time was right.

His timing was impeccable Tuesday night.

The Tigers handcuffed Kennedy stars Stephanie Botkin and Lela Sellers in the fourth quarter with their "junk" defense and upended the Cougars, 51-49, on a layup by Ally Conrad with nine-tenths of a second left in the game at Kennedy.

Cedar Falls (18-5) will make its first trip to the state tournament in seven years next week and face Waukee (21-2) in the opening round on Wednesday.

Kennedy retired with a 16-7 record after seeing a six-point lead evaporate in the fourth quarter.

Waverly too strong for Marion girls

VINTON - The Marion girls’ Cinderella season ended early Tuesday night in the regional finals when a wicked first quarter against rugged Waverly–Shell Rock put them too far back to catch up.

Though the Indians scored the first basket of the game after a steal by Amanda Sahm and a sweet fast-break feed to fellow senior Michalyn Mohr, the Go-Hawks dominated from then on and won easily 46-32.

They led 15-3 after the first period. And while Marion cut the margin to seven at half, another drought in the third quarter pushed the deficit back to 13.

It was mostly fouls and free throws for the victors from that point on for the undefeated fifth-ranked team in Class 4A.

No. 8 Lions fall at No.6 SE Polk

RUNNELLS - Linn-Mar took the fight to a postseason-savvy Southeast Polk squad on its home court Tuesday night in a Class 5A regional final, but the Rams hung around and later used a 9-0 fourth-quarter run to pull away for a 56-45 victory.

It wasn’t the storybook ending the Lions were looking for, but Coach Jaime Printy Brandt’s first team drew perhaps the most difficult matchup of any of the 5A regional finalists.

Linn-Mar was tasked with a charter bus trip to Runnels on a weeknight to face a Southeast Polk team that’s played in the past two state championship games and won the title in 2013.

“They just hit some big shots,” said Brandt, who led the eighth-ranked Lions to a 16-8 record in her first season as head coach. “We lost a shooter a couple times, but credit to them, they came out and played well and shot the ball very well. That’s what they do.”

The Lions set the early tone by scoring 10 of the game’s first 12 points over the first 5:57 of the first quarter behind a pair of buckets from Olivia Montaque. Following the quick start, Linn-Mar grabbed a 16-8 lead after the opening period.