Metro Sports Report

No. 1 Lions too deep for Warriors

Maybe the Washington Warriors should have cleared the gym Friday night and played a pickup game of 2-on-2 basketball, with Wes Washpun and Josh Oglesby facing Marcus Paige and Matt Bohannon.

That might have been a fair fight. Reality was not.

The top-ranked Linn-Mar Lions proved they were too deep, too talented and too good for the Warriors and smashed them, 80-55, in a Mississippi Valley Conference mismatch.

Paige and Bohannon scored in double figures for Linn-Mar, but so did all its other starters as Josh Montague, Ian McBrayer and Shane Benton joined the fun.

Cougars suppress Jarrod Uthoff, J-Hawks

The sixth-ranked Kennedy Cougars did to the second-ranked Jefferson J-Hawks on Friday night what Washington did last month.

They kept 6-foot-8 all-stater Jarrod Uthoff from getting the ball in the middle much of the game and then bottled him up with two or three defenders when he did get  it.

Averaging 28.8 points coming into the Mississippi Valley matchup of one-loss teams, Uthoff made four of just 10 shots taken from the field (including one three-pointer) and was held to 12 points.

Without his usual scoring, Jefferson didn’t have enough firepower to overcome the hard-nosed effort Kennedy put on in a 44-37 win.

This is the golden age of Metro basketball

Note to Cedar Rapids Metro basketball fans: Make no mistake about it, you are living in the golden age of outstanding basketball in the Metro area.

With numerous teams rated in the top 10, with Division I scholarship athletes playing all over the place, this should be your time to enjoy the high school game, whichever school you like to follow. Or just go to a game that you don't have an interest in, just to see the caliber of basketball that's being played in the Metro area these days.

Cougars-Lions work OT in bowling

Kennedy had to work overtime to finally beat Linn-Mar Friday afternoon in a Mississippi Valley Conference girls bowling meet at Cedar Rapids Bowling Center.

The score was tied, 2625-2625, at the end of regulation, so an extra Baker round game was rolled. Each of the five bowlers on each team rolled a pair of frames in alternate fashion.  The meet was still up for grabs after Kennedy's Paige Ermer left a 7-10 split in her final frame. Linn-Mar's Stacey Schwarzenstein needed two strikes, plus pins on a third ball, to give the Lions the victory. She knocked down all but the 10 pin and Kennedy escaped with a 15-pin victory.

Ermer led the Cougars (5-1, 5-1 MVC) with a 206 high game and 403 high series.  Schwarzenstein topped all bowlers with games of 222 and 234 for a 456 series. Linn-Mar is 3-3, 3-3.