CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — She referred to her eighth-grade son as victim No. 400.

He was one of at least 440 young victims of a former Iowa youth basketball coach sentenced Thursday to 180 years in prison for soliciting explicit images, capturing secret nude video and photos and inappropriately touching hundreds of boys over the course of almost two decades.

The mother — the Des Moines Register isn't identifying her to prevent her son from being identified — addressed 43-year-old Greg Stephen, of Monticello, Iowa, moments before the sentence was pronounced at the U.S. Courthouse in Cedar Rapids.

“My son would have followed you anywhere; he thought you held the keys to the basketball kingdom," she said. "You forced evil on the goodness and sweetness that is my son.”

She and another mother read victim impact statements at the front of the courtroom, asking that Stephen be given the maximum possible penalty of 180 years.

Stephen's lawyers, arguing that that punishment was too severe, requested he be placed behind bars for only 20 years, followed by 15 years of supervised release.

"This is a horrendous offense," U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams said in rejecting the plea for leniency. "He exploited, manipulated and abused children for almost two decades."

The harm to the victims, as well as their parents and the community, Williams said, was "incalculable and profound."

An otherwise clean criminal record didn't make Stephen a "first-time offender," as his lawyers argued, Williams said. Instead, the judge called him a repeat offender who went years without being caught.

A witness who testified on Stephen's behalf Thursday said the ex-coach was a low risk of offending again. Mark Mills, a forensic scientist, testified that although Stephen would still fantasize about young boys, he would no longer act on it because his arrest proved the risk to be too extraordinary.

Stephen pleaded guilty in October to five counts of sexual exploitation of a child and to possessing and transporting child pornography.

Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation agent Ryan Kedley said a hard drive was turned in to police in February 2018. It contained more than 400 folders, listed in alphabetical order by last name, with anywhere from two to 100 images and video of each victim.

These included covert recordings of boys in bathrooms and hotel rooms, males conducting sex acts for the camera and images of victims taken by Stephen, Kedley testified Thursday.

Another file, titled "vault," contained several hundred more unorganized and unlabeled pornographic images of young males, he said.

Kedley, assisted by other agents, reached out to each of the victims on the hard drive as part of the investigation into how Stephen obtained the images.

One photo showed Stephen next to a boy who appeared to be asleep on a bed. He was holding the camera at arm's length in one hand, and the boy's penis in the other, "positioning it just inches from his mouth," Kedley said. The boy later told investigators that Stephen had given him medication that night that made him drowsy.

Many of the pornographic images were sent to Stephen by boys he manipulated into sending nude photos and videos, often of them masturbating, by pretending to be a teenage girl who promised to exchange nude photos with them, Kedley said.

About 15 of the 440 boys were victims of what Kedley called "hands-on abuse."

In multiple cases, the victims accused Stephen of sharing a hotel bed with them during basketball trips, only to have them awake to him touching their penis in an attempt to get them to ejaculate before masturbating himself.

A former Barnstormers player told the Des Moines Register last year that Stephen had masturbated next to him in bed in Las Vegas last summer. He never confronted Stephen or brought it up with other coaches.

"I was so young," one of Stephen's players told the Register last year. "I feel like that’s what his power was against us — we were so young."

Stephen helped begin the Iowa Barnstormers, an elite Adidas-sponsored traveling program for the state's best youth players.

He then used the program filled with eager young players as a "steady, replenishing stream of victims," U.S. Attorney Marc Krickbaum's office said in April.

"The families of these victims sought out defendant, paid for his expertise and connections, and entrusted him with the safety and futures of their sons," prosecutors wrote in the filing, adding that Stephen abused the families' trust to "access, manipulate and groom these victims so he could sexually exploit them."

Stephen helped launch the Barnstormers in 2005 with program founder Jamie Johnson.

For the following 13 years, Stephen was a co-director and coach for the program, which includes boys and girls teams as young as fourth grade.

"It's nearly impossible for me to express the depths of my sadness, remorse," Stephen said during one final bid Thursday for leniency in his punishment.

He listed what he believed to be some of his greatest contributions to the community, now tarnished: the basketball program, scholarships, fundraisers for cancer research.

"My selfish actions have turned some of my proudest accomplishments into victims," he said.

The judge had to weigh Stephen's regret, and 20 letters of support from relatives, teachers, colleagues and customers, against the scale and depravity of his crimes.

Williams settled on the maximum sentence.