Hampshire runs past Prairie Ridge
Hampshire’s boys basketball team knows it can turn to Brendan Waterworth for an energy boost.
And Waterworth knew he couldn’t conserve any energy with his assignment of guarding dangerous Prairie Ridge junior Michael Bradshaw in Thursday night’s Fox Valley Conference boys basketball crossover at Hampshire.
The 6-foot-1 senior held Bradshaw to 8 points and senior Tyler Crater put the spark in the Whip-Purs offense with 20 points and four 3-pointers as they rolled to a 64-40 victory.
“Brendan is the Energizer Bunny,” said Hampshire assistant coach Mike Featherly, who continued to run the team with head coach Bob Barnett still on the mend from a pair of heart attacks Nov. 20. “(Bradshaw) is a good player and one of the things we didn’t want to do was let him get going. The kid (Waterworth) never gets tired.”
Bradshaw scored 26 of his career-high 38 points in the final 10:23 of a 76-71 win Saturday over Carmel. But Waterworth shook off a turned left ankle early in the game to keep Bradshaw from scoring until 2:42 before halftime and limiting him to 3-for-10 shooting from the field and 0-for-6 on 3s.
“I knew he was a good shooter so I tried to get in his face,” said Waterworth, who missed the first 1:16 of the second half as he was still getting his ankle taped. “I knew I was quick enough to get in front of him so he couldn’t get layups.”
On the other end it seemed as if Hampshire was running a layup drill en route to 69.4 percent shooting (25-for-36) from the field. Crater was 8-for-12 overall and 4-for-7 from behind the arc to go with 6 rebounds and 2 assists.
Ryan Cork (7 points) had 7 assists and Waterworth and Michael Dumoulin (9 points, 5 rebounds) had 2 assists apiece. Sophomore Matthew Bridges had 9 points, 6-6 Shane Hernandez had 6 points and 3 blocks and sophomore Jacob Tuttle added 5 points.
“We really found the open man and had good ball movement,” Waterworth said after Hampshire hit its first 7 second-half shots to open a 51-28 lead.
“They did a nice job of running their stuff, getting the ball to their better players and hitting shots,” said Prairie Ridge coach Corky Card. “They handled (our pressure) and played good basketball tonight.”
Prairie Ridge (2-2) also paid a heavy price for its 33 turnovers as Hampshire turned them into 36 points.
“It was difficult coming off the tournament with so many games in a row,” Crater said. “We wanted to get good energy going on defense and have it translate to the offensive end. We played well. A lot of what we did was because we were able to deny the ball to the inside and get good pressure on the perimeter.”
Prairie Ridge shot just 35.6 percent (16-for-45) from the field and was 3-for-14 behind the arc. Hampshire committed 27 turnovers but limited the damage off them to just 10 points.
“Credit coach Barnett because we’re running his press-breaker,” Featherly said. “He’s been texting me and we executed his game plan.”
Featherly, a 1998 Palatine graduate who played for 500-game winner Ed Molitor, said Barnett’s return is still uncertain. Featherly said Barnett talked to the team at practice Wednesday and before their game Saturday.
“It’s a wait and see on how he’s feeling,” said Featherly, who is in his first year as a varsity assistant and seventh year in the program. “I know he’s champing at the bit to be here.”