The No. 2 ranked WACO Warrior boys basketball team looks to continue their playoff march tonight when they travel to Burlington Notre Dame High School to meet the New London Tigers. Never before had the Warriors wrapped up an undefeated regular season prior 2019-2020, and they validated that with a 46-38 opening round playoff win over Winfield Mt. Union Thursday. The Warriors pulled away in the fourth, winning the period 16-8. Nik Coble led the way with a double double going for 13 points and 14 rebounds, Drew Kissel had 12 and Gabe Reichenbach 11.

The Warriors enter tonight’s contest ranked No. 2 in the latest poll from the Iowa Associated Press for class 1A. They are led by Nik Coble at 15 points per game. Coble is also the team leader with 111 assists, 61 steals and 293 rebounds. That gives him a double double average per game at 15 and 13.

New London comes into the contest at 15-7. In the first round they got by Wapello 53-42 behind 19 points from Kade Benjamin, 15 points and 10 rebounds from Grant Swanson and 13 points from Blaise Porter. These two teams met twice during the regular season with WACO sweeping the series, 55-53 in Wayland with Drew Kissell scoring 18, Pietro Vannini 11 and Braden Hammond 10. New London was led in the loss by Blaise Porter with 20. At New London it was a Warrior romp two weeks ago 70-44 with Kissell and Vannini each scoring 18 while Coble went double double with 15 points and 22 rebounds. Blaise Porter had 12 points. This week, WACO head coach Paul Kissell talked about seeing the Tigers again and the keys to the game. “They played us tight at our place. They are very athletic. They have two 6’4″ or 6’5″ kids inside. That’s a really nice 1-2 punch inside. Then they have Porter who is a tremendous athlete and as a freshman has done well. What we focused on in our last game against them was our defensive presence. Not letting them get to the basket, knowing who the shooters are. Our kids have done an excellent job communicating. Those will be the keys, limit their good looks and push in transition to get some easy ones ourselves.”

Winner of this game will play the winner of No. 8 Burlington Notre Dame and Pekin for the district championship on Thursday at Mediapolis. You can hear all of the action live tonight on AM 1380, FM 102.5 and KCIIradio.com, from Notre Dame High School beginning with the Washington HyVee pregame show at 6p.m. and tip off at 6:30.