Hampshire pulls away from Kaneland for 2-0 weekend
Plug one leak against the Hampshire boys basketball team and two more are liable to pop up.
Playing for the second time in less than 19 hours, Hampshire's balanced scoring proved too much for Kaneland in an 81-44 nonconference win at the Purple Palace Saturday afternoon.
Junior guard Collin Woods led the way with 17 points - 10 on fast-break finishes - 6-foot-7 junior forward Nick Erickson made three 3-pointers en route to 15 points, 6-3 senior J.D. Shaw finished with 14 points and 6 rebounds and freshman guard Keynan Davis scored 14 points.
"I think we're one of the hardest teams to guard in the area because everyone can score," Woods said.
"We're really an all-around team," Shaw said. "If one person isn't doing it, the whole team is going to pick him up."
The game was tied 16-16 after a quarter, but Hampshire dominated the second period in taking a 44-28 halftime lead. The Whips opened the quarter with a 7-0 run, courtesy of a 3-pointer by Shaw, an end-to-end drive to the basket by Davis and a driving layup by the 6-5 Woods.
The quarter ended with 5 straight points by reserve Jackson Millison. The junior guard made a steal at midcourt and converted at the other end with 46 seconds left. He later sank a 3-pointer from the top of the arc to beat the buzzer.
Hampshire (10-5) poured it on with 24 more third-quarter points to establish a 68-39 lead, at which point coach Ben Whitehouse pulled his starters.
The decisive victory was precisely the kind of follow-up to Friday's emotional Fox Valley Conference win over Cary-Grove that Whitehouse sought.
"This weekend was big, especially coming off how we lost to Crystal Lake Central out at Marengo," he said. "It's just another step down the path that we want to be on. We're moving forward and moving together toward the goals in front of us, and our guys feel like they can go get it."
Kaneland (3-13) lost the rebounding battle 30-24 and committed 21 turnovers, about par for the course for the Knights this season. The Knights experienced similar issues in Thursday's 82-49 loss to Zion-Benton.
"It's a running clock two nights in a row so it's a little bit frustrating," said first-year Kaneland coach Russ Zick, an Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame inductee. "I thought we played well early. Then the Saturday afternoon casualness took over.
"We have a really hard time rebounding and we turn the ball over a lot so we don't really get into our offenses. It doesn't really matter who we play. It's the same thing. But we'll keep trying. We'll just go back to the drawing board and try again."
Kaneland senior Luke Brost scored all of his team-high 10 points in the first half and juniors Bryce Ebert and Ethan Feiza each contributed 8 points for the Knights.