Storm Lake, Ia (Northwest Iowa Now) – On today’s edition of the Best Teams from the KICD 9-County Area in the 2025-2026 year, we turn our attention to Boys Basketball and the Storm Lake Tornadoes.

Storm Lake turned in a brilliant 2024-2025 season, going 22-2 and 8-0 in the Lakes Conference, taking home the league crown comfortably. That season came to an end in the Class 3A State Quarterfinals to Adel-DeSoto-Minburn in a 59-53 loss.

For the 2025-2026 season, Storm Lake was bringing back their top 5 leading scorers, and 9 of their top 10, giving the Tornadoes a lot of attention coming into the new year.

Storm Lake opened up the season with 8 straight wins, including a 79-44 route of Spirit Lake to open up Conference Play. One day after that, Storm Lake went on the road to a tough environment against Carroll, another 3A team with high expectations for the year. The Tornadoes handled the Tigers 77-61. They would come back a few days later with a convincing 87-67 win against Cherokee, the team that would finish 2nd behind Storm Lake in the Lakes Conference.

The unbeaten season would come to an end on January 10th in Sioux Falls’ Sanford Pentagon against South Dakota Power Sioux Falls Christian. The Chargers came away with a 70-59 win against Storm Lake in the neutral site game.

The Tornadoes rattled off 5 more wins through mid-January, including their premier win on the year, 99-97 against Westside of Omaha, Nebraska at Lincoln of Council Bluffs’ MLK Classic on January 19th. Storm Lake would get their second loss on the year at home against eventual 2A State Runner-Up Kuemper Catholic of Carroll 85-79.

The Tornadoes wrapped up the regular season on a 7-game winning streak, averaging a margin of victory at 39.1 points per game. In that streak, they notched another impressive resume win on February 17th in Sioux City against 4A East High 78-72.

Storm Lake was given the #1 seed in Class 3A Substate 8 and opened up with a 73-30 drubbing of Denison-Schleswig. The Tornadoes also flattened Algona in the Semifinal round 72-36.

Sergeant Bluff-Luton was up next in the Substate Championship game which was played at Siebens Fieldhouse on the Campus of Buena Vista University in Storm Lake. The Tornadoes came out with a purpose in the 1st quarter, blitzing the Warriors to the tune of a 24-9 advantage. That lead grew further in the 2nd quarter with Storm Lake outscoring SB-L 15-4, and they took a 39-13 win into the locker room. Sergeant Bluff-Luton would try and mount the comeback, and outscored the Tornadoes 40-27 in the second half, but that wasn’t enough, and the Tornadoes advanced back to the Class 3A State Tournament with a 66-53 win.

Storm Lake was given the #3 seed in Class 3A and took on the #6 seed Solon in the Quarterfinal round. It was a fantastic game that the Tornadoes led 15-13 after the first quarter. Solon outscored Storm Lake 13-10 in the 2nd and took a 26-25 lead into the half. Storm Lake re-took the lead in the 3rd quarter and had a 4-point lead into the 4th. Solon tied that game in regulation, sending the matchup in to overtime. There, the Tornadoes pulled away, winning 68-60, advancing to the State Semifinals.

That Semifinal round provided Storm Lake with a rematch of the 2024-2025 State Quarterfinals, where they lost to Adel-DeSoto-Minburn. A strong defensive effort in the first quarter had the Tornadoes up 12-6 going into the 2nd, but ADM charged back and had a 27-25 lead at the half. It was a very high scoring 2nd half, as the two teams combined for 31 points in the 3rd, and 43 in the 4th. The game was tied at 58 after 4 quarters, and for the 2nd game in a row, Storm Lake was going to overtime. This time, 1 overtime wasn’t enough to decide it, as each team was only able to muster 5 points in the 5-minute period. Adel-DeSoto-Minburn came away with a 9-7 advantage in the 2nd overtime and won 72-70.

The Tornadoes were dominant over the 2025-2026 season, averaging 77.8 points per game while only allowing 50.3 points per contest. Jaidyn Coon, the soon to be Iowa Men’s Basketball commit, averaged 22 points, 9.3 rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 1.7 steals per game in his Iowa Mr. Basketball Campaign. Cameron Boyd was more than complimentary to the State’s best basketball player, averaging 20.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 2.1 steals per game. Garbieno Weno, another Senior, also was a double-digit scorer at 10.3 points per game with 7.7 rebounds. Those three graduate, contributing 67.9% of Storm Lake’s points per game in the 2025-2026 season. While that will be tough to replace production for the Tornadoes, Juniors Trey Boettcher, Timothy Yanga, and David William were all very consistent players, averaging over 8 points per game and filling the other stat categories well as the 4-5-6.

This has been another edition of the KICD 9-County Area’s best teams of the 2025-2026 year. We will move on to Spring Sports next.