Jack Nunge and Brady Ellingson’s Vinton Merchants faced off against Luka Garza and Maishe Dailey’s Westport Touchless Autowashes. How’d they do?!

Nunge/Ellingson 96 - 92 Garza/Dailey

On the back of Nunge’s 42 points and 14 rebounds - his second game at/above 40 - Nunge’s team took the championship in overtime. With most Iowa media in Chicago for B1G media day, accounts were sparse, but AllHawkeyes.com was on the scene. Ellingson added 23 points with 4 threes and a perfect 6/6 from the stripe. Garza missed another game (reportedly nursing an injury) and Dailey had an underwhelming 9 points.

Without Garza, Wyatt Lohaus of UNI stepped up huge throughout the tournament. He tallied 27 points to lead his team. Hal Bateman, formerly of Davenport Central, added 20 points and repeatedly blocked Nunge, despite yielding a foot of height, as Nunge went up soft, according to the above link.

Awards

(via PTL website)

MVP: Jack Nunge: 32.4 PPG/12.7 RPG/3.2 APG

Nunge lead the league in scoring AND rebounding, which is a great first impression to make.

Chris Street Award: Brady Ellingson: 22.1 PPG/6.9 RPG/5.1 APG (and Klint Carlson)

Best Defender: Christian Williams: 16.7 PPG/6.3 RPG/3.8 APG

Other Stuff

• Jon Rothstein came out with his Big Ten offseason notebook and, spoiler alert, Iowa comes in 5th in his power rankings behind: Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, and Purdue. It’s frankly a little difficult to find too much to grovel about here, but I’ll find something. Not only is Jack Nunge, Prime Time League MVP, not listed as one of 15 “Impact Freshmen” but he isn’t even listed as an “Under-the-Radar” freshmen. Now that is under the radar.
• Nicholas Baer’s Twitter feed is filled with Game of Thrones, Pokemon Go, and Harry Potter so naturally there is a HawkCentral post about his game beginning to match his nerdiness.
• Iowa offered 2019 Bettendorf point guard DJ Carton over the weekend. JPinIC will have a Hoops Crootin’ Boogie with the full details in the coming weeks.