The unblemished record of the Clear Lake Lions remained intact last week when they hosted the St. Edmond Gaels in a rescheduled game from last month and after a trip to Iowa Falls to take on the Iowa Falls-Alden Cadets.
On Monday, Jan. 8, the Lions were ranked first overall in Class 3A by the Iowa High School Athletic Association.
Clear Lake 72
St. Edmond 37
Trading blows early, the Lions began to jump ahead late in the first eight minutes of competition with buckets by Cael Stephany, Thomas Meyer and Titan Schmitt.
By the end of the first, the Lions led by six, but the next quarter saw the Lions push ahead even further.
Schmitt opened the quarter with a shot from beyond the arc for three points and Dylan Litzel also got into the scoring for the Lion offense after a jump pass from Trevor Theobald.
At the buzzer, the Lions led the Gaels 37-17 with Meyer, Schmitt and Litzel all at eight points each.
Starting the second half, St. Edmond found an offensive attack that put the Lions back on their heels.
Outscoring the Lions 17-14 in the third, it looked like the Gaels had found the answer to the Lions powerful offense and stout defense.
After the pause between quarters, the Lions went back to the court and turned on the jets.
Clear Lake allowed just three points the entire quarter as the Lions collected 21.
The quarter went quick as the Lions led by more than 32 points at one point, putting the running clock rule into effect.
The Lions ran out the clock and improved to 8-0 on the season and 3-0 in the North Central Conference to stay on top.
Thomas Meyer led the team with 17-points, while Titan Schmitt had 14 and Dylan Litzel scored 10.
Leading the team under the boards was Meyer with 13, while Schmitt had nine.
Schmitt led the team in assists with five.
Clear Lake head coach Jeremey Ainley was pleased with the teams performance after coming out of winter break.
“We’ve been practicing this whole break so it was nice to get started,” said Ainley. “I thought we were doing some good things, and I wanted to see us come out and stay aggressive. We slipped up there defensively in the third quarter and let them back a little bit but got back in the fourth letting our defense predicate our offense.”
While pleased with the effort, Ainley knows there is still work to be done despite being undefeated after eight games.
“It’s where we want to be at this point but it’s obviously a work in progress and we aren’t satisfied with where we are at so we will keep going from there.”
Dylan Litzel, a senior for Clear Lake enjoyed being back on the court but noted it was difficult after the break to hit the floor running.
“It’s pretty hard coming back from a long break, we had some practices and it’s fun but it’s also hard,” said Litzel.
Despite the challenges of the break, Litzel was able to score 10 points and help lead the team to victory, to which he credited the big men for the Lions.
“I think what allowed us to score was our big men, getting it inside. They aren’t a very big team,” said Litzel. “If we couldn’t get it inside, we could always kick it out to our guards on the outside for a three because they are good shooters.”
Litzel said sitting at 8-0 on the season feels good.
“It feels good but I think we deserve it. We’ve put a lot of work into it,” said Litzel.
Clear Lake 66
Iowa Falls-Alden 33
Clear Lake took a trip to Iowa Falls last Friday to face the Cadets in a match up that saw the Lions with two double digit scorers and a 33-point victory.
Led by Dylan Litzel with 15-points and Cael Stephany with 13, the Lion offense was firing on all cylinders out of the gate, scoring 14-points. The Lion defense was led by Thomas Meyer with 13 rebounds (eight on defense). The Lions allowed only five to the Cadets.
Continuing to find ways to score, the Lions went into halftime ahead 34-15.
The second half was much the same as the first, as the third quarter saw 25-points for Clear Lake and only 12 for the hosts.
The Lions had jumped ahead 59-27 and all but put the game away. The fourth quarter saw the Lion bench enter the game.
It was a slower final eight minutes, but the offense managed seven points, while the defense allowed only six as the Lions improved to 9-0 on the season and 4-0 in the conference, just ahead of Hampton-Dumont-CAL who is also 4-0 in the conference and has a 6-1 record overall.
The win over the Cadets saw the Lions shooting at 50.9 percent on the night making 29-of-57 buckets, with seven-of-20 being from beyond the arch.
With only three attempts at the charity stripe, the Lions were one-for-three.
Under the bucket, Clear Lake collected 44 rebounds, had 26 assists and seven steals.
Defensively, the Lions allowed the Cadets to make 11 buckets, three of which were treys. The Lions collected eight-points from the line on 17 attempts.
Iowa Falls-Alden also had 22 rebounds, six assists and 10 steals.
