T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE – East Marshall junior Jackson Busch (43) looks up at the scoreboard after the final buzzer sounds on the Mustangs’ 66-55 loss to Bellevue in Saturday’s Class 1A Substate 3 basketball final at Solon High School. The Mustangs made it to the substate final for the first time since back-to-back appearances in 2017-2018.
T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE – East Marshall senior guard Blake Neuroth (11) swipes for the ball as Bellevue’s Jaxton Leach (4) protects it during the fourth quarter of Saturday’s Class 1A Substate 3 final at Solon High School.
T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE – East Marshall junior Jaxson Boswell (3) makes a 3-pointer in front of the Bellevue student section during Saturday’s Class 1A Substate 3 basketball final at Solon High School.
SOLON — The East Marshall boys’ basketball team made its first appearance in the substate finals in eight years and executed its gameplan to perfection.
Bellevue refused to cooperate.
The sixth-ranked Comets came up with the outside shots they needed and fended off the unrelenting Mustangs for a 66-55 victory in Saturday’s Class 1A Substate 3 finale at Solon High School, ending East Marshall’s quest to be the school’s first state basketball qualifier since 1988.
Mustang head coach Chris Hungerford, in his third season at the helm, was a part of that LDF squad that saw the inside of Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines in 1988. Hungerford was on the verge of getting East Marshall (18-7) to the Casey’s Center for the first time since LDF and SEMCO consolidated in 1992, and he believed he had the team to do it.
But Bellevue (22-3) played above its averages and made shots the Mustangs were prepared to surrender.
The end result, regardless of East Marshall’s furious rally in the fourth quarter, was the Comets’ first trip to state since beating another North Iowa Cedar League club — Gladbrook-Reinbeck — in 2022.
Junior guard Cameron Casel scored a season-high 20 points, 6-foot-6 senior center KeShawn DeShaw had a double-double and Bellevue moved past the Mustangs in the first-ever meeting between the schools. The Comets held East Marshall — the second-highest scoring team in 1A — to their second-lowest total of the season and secured their spot in the eight-team field at state.
“We’ve talked about having this opportunity for a year now, since last year’s banquet,” said Hungerford. “We thought that we could be a state tournament team and they took that challenge up, and they’ve worked hard all year. They’ve given everything at every practice, they get coached hard, they listen, they don’t complain and they just give great … they give great effort all the time. I’m just so proud of them.
“They gave everything had. I just wish that they could have got the prize and went to Des Moines.”
East Marshall held just one lead in the game, though the Mustangs never went away. Jackson Bidwell sank a 3-pointer for a 3-1 advantage in the early stages of the substate final, but Bellevue responded with the next nine points and never trailed again.
The deficit grew to eight during the second quarter, but East Marshall got a spark off its bench when junior guard Jaxson Boswell scored his team’s last eight points before half — including two 3-pointers — and the gap closed to 35-33 at the intermission.
DeShaw scored 10 of his 12 points in the first half in spite of the attention he garnered from East Marshall’s defense. The Mustangs had to sag off the weak side to help prevent DeShaw from getting the ball down low, and the Comets’ guards were waiting on the weak side to shoot as well as they had all season, if not better.
“They hit shots they don’t normally hit,” said East Marshall senior guard Blake Neuroth, “so we weren’t expecting that I guess. We came out in a zone to start and they’ve been struggling with that all year, and we had to switch it up to man because of that shooting. It just happens that they were ‘on’.”
The Mustangs used a 6-2 surge to get within 42-39 during the third, but Bellevue scored the final six points of the period to push the margin back to nine, 48-39.
That turned out to be more ground than the Mustangs could cover in the time they had left to do it, but that didn’t keep them from trying.
“It’s not a great place to be,” Neuroth said of the deficit. “Knowing that we’re down by that much, but we also know that we’ve come back from that before and we shoot threes — I mean, we’re the number one three-point shooting team in 1A — so three, four scores you’re back in the game, so you’ve got to think that way.”
A pair of free throws by Jack Kirk with 2:54 remaining brought Bellevue’s lead to its peak — 13 — but East Marshall kept fighting. Boswell scored another five in a row to spark a 10-2 run by the Mustangs that had tensions on high inside a packed Solon gymnasium.
After Boswell’s fourth 3-pointer of the game got it back to 10, Neuroth hit a jumper and Bidwell got a three-point play after a steal to make it 60-55 Comets with 1:24 remaining.
Bellevue, a 60-percent free-throw shooting team for the season, went 8-for-15 at the line in the fourth quarter and outlasted East Marshall’s last gasp as the Mustangs couldn’t get their desperation shots to fall.
“It was a smart tactic by them,” Bellevue head coach Chet Knake said of East Marshall sending his team to the free-throw line. “They were super-physical going after the ball and I give them all the credit in the world for making a comeback.”
The Comets stayed the course and joined cross-town rival Marquette Catholic in the 1A field for state. The Defenders (23-2) defeated Montezuma on a 3-pointer at the buzzer in overtime at Iowa City High about an hour before Bellevue booked its spot in Des Moines.
East Marshall would have done anything for that bid.
“We’ve worked hard the last three years,” Neuroth said. “Three years ago, a new coach comes in and we don’t really know how to feel about that. And some of the stuff he started with, we weren’t sure about, and we worked it out the last three years and it turns out he knew what he was doing with what we had for size and speed and strength.
“We’ve been working hard and pushing each other. We’ve played together for a long time. It’s been special. It’s really nice to have the whole community come out and feeling them behind your back. It’s a good feeling.”
Boswell finished with a team-leading 18 points while Bidwell added 13, both battling foul trouble throughout. Jackson Busch got eight points despite suffering a cut below his eye in the third quarter that left behind a pool of blood on the baseline.
Cody Weaver came away with six points and Neuroth added five in East Marshall’s hard-fought finale.
“We talked after the game about how, for a long time, nobody’s talked about East Marshall basketball,” Hungerford said. “Now people know who we are. They know how we play, just the effort and the energy, and those guys have been so coachable.
“I’m just proud of them for how they’ve helped bring the program along over the last three years. We’ve become very well respected in our conference and people know if East Marshall shows up, you better be ready to play basketball.”
The North Iowa Cedar League fared well in Class 2A, where Grundy Center, Aplington-Parkersburg and Union Community all qualified for state, but the Mustangs just missed making their mark in 1A.
Bellevue 66, East Marshall 55
EAST MARSHALL (18-7) — Blake Neuroth 2 0-0 5, Cody Weaver 3 0-0 6, Jackson Bidwell 4 3-3 13, Cael Curphy 3 1-1 7, Jackson Busch 4 0-0 8, Jaxson Boswell 6 0-0 18, Eli Burns 0 0-0 0, Dallas Miller 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 22 4-4 55.
BELLEVUE (22-3) — Cameron Casel 8 2-2 20, Owen Putman 4 0-0 10, Jaxson Leach 2 4-11 8, KeShawn DeShaw 4 4-4 12, Jack Kirk 1 6-9 8, Keenan Kilburg 1 0-0 2, Spencer Abbott 3 0-0 6, Cal Bonifas 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 23 16-26 66.
E. MARSHALL 13 20 6 16 — 55
BELLEVUE 15 20 13 18 — 66
3-Point Goals–East Marshall 7 (Boswell 4, Bidwell 2, Neuroth), Bellevue 4 (Casel 2, Putman 2). Team Fouls–East Marshall 19, Bellevue 12. Fouled Out–Boswell.
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