Waukon basketball girls to open State Tournament play Monday against fellow NEIC squad Crestwood; Could see another familiar face in second round

The ninth-rated Waukon girls basketball team (18-3) has played its way to the Class 3A State Tournament for the first time since the 2009-2010 season, posting a 55-44 victory over 13th-rated Davenport Assumption Saturday, February 16 in a game played at Marion High School. The Indians will play their first State Tournament game Monday, February 25 as the number-five seed in a 6:45 p.m. quarterfinal match-up with fourth-seeded Crestwood (15-5) from their own Northeast Iowa Conference. The Class 3A seventh-rated Cadets are the defending Class 3A State Tournament Champions and are making their third consecutive State Tournament appearance and their fifth in the past six seasons. The two teams split in their pair of regular season match-ups earlier this season, the Indians winning at Crestwood, 42-31, in mid-December but the Cadets handing the Tribe a 56-53 home defeat in late January.
The winner of that first-round match-up will advance to a Thursday, February 28 semifinals contest at 1:30 p.m. against the first-round winner of a game between top-rated and top-seeded North Polk (21-2) and unrated, eighth-seeded Estherville-Lincoln Central (14-10). That Estherville-Lincoln Central team is coached by Waukon native and 1973 Waukon High School graduate Don Martindale, who took over the helm of the Lady Midgets’ program just over a year ago, inheriting a program that had won just 13 games combined in its previous four seasons. Martindale’s squad pieced together three regional tournament wins on the road over the past couple weeks, upsetting fourth-rated Algona and pulling out two other games in overtime along the way.
The semifinals winner will then advance on to play for the Class 3A State Tournament championship Friday, March 1 at 8 p.m. That championship opponent will emerge from the other two Class 3A first-round match-ups featuring fifth-rated Des Moines Christian (22-2) vs. 11th-rated Roland-Story (19-5) and third-rated Center Point-Urbana (21-2) vs. unrated West Marshall (14-7).

Full coverage of the Lady Indians' State Tournament journey will appear in a future edition of The Standard. You can subscribe to The Standard's print edition or e-edition by clicking here.