Dundee-Crown turns the tables on Hampshire

After Dundee-Crown blew a late lead in an overtime loss to Hampshire last week, the Chargers made it a priority not to let it happen again.

It nearly did. The Whip-Purs whittled an 11-point second-half deficit down to 2 before the Chargers pulled away for a 57-49 boys basketball victory in Fox Valley Conference action in Carpentersville Friday night.

Jack Orndahl had 22 points, including 6 crucial free throws in the fourth quarter that helped the Chargers maintain the lead. Tariq Burns added 14 points and 10 rebounds for D-C. Gabe Bergeron contributed 9 points off the bench including a couple of monster dunks that energized the crowd, as well as a 3-pointer.

Nathan Gomez led Hampshire with 12 points and 7 rebounds.

"We had a great week of practice this week and I just think (last week's loss) was in our minds the entire week," said Orndahl. "It was a perfect opportunity, and we used it as extra motivation to get a victory."

Trailing 40-29 late in the third quarter, the Whips rattled off 9 straight points to get within 40-38 on a bucket by Isaiah Gonzales. The Whips' full-court pressure rattled the Chargers somewhat. But a pair of free throws by Orndahl started an 8-3 run that kept the Chargers out of danger.

"He missed the front end of a one-and-one last Saturday, and he's a pretty determined guy," said D-C coach Lance Huber. "Probably to a fault he's hard on himself, so he wanted to make a couple tonight."

This time, the Chargers reacted better to the Hampshire pressure.

"We talked a lot about that last Saturday, about how they're going to come after us, they're going to press us, and we handled it worse than we did tonight if that's possible," said Huber. "We talked a lot about learning our lesson from the week before, and the guys did a good job of finding that motivation."

Hampshire surged to an early 13-5 lead. D-C answered with a 16-2 run to take the lead for good. The Whips fell in love with the 3-point shot during that second quarter but couldn't get enough to fall. When they went back inside, they began to cut into the lead.

"We started to attack the rim better. And we kept clawing defensively," said Hampshire coach Ben Whitehouse. "I loved our intensity, I loved our fight, we just weren't able to finish inside when we had the opportunity."

J.D. Shaw added 9 points and 4 assists for Hampshire, while Frederick Powell and William Dumoulin added 8 and 7 points, respectively.