Neuqua beats Hampshire for Oswego tourney title
Dennis Rodman helped Neuqua Valley to a 45-42 victory against Hampshire at the Oswego Holiday Classic championship game Saturday night. Or at least the freshman girl version of the former Chicago Bulls forward did.
Nikki Lazar scored 7 of her 13 points in the final 2:41 of the game to lead the Wildcats a come-from-behind win.
“I call her Dennis Rodman,” Wildcats coach Mike Williams said, “because she’s, again, one of those kids who you look at you really don’t think much of and all of a sudden she’s under the basket rebounding, putting it back up, getting steals, creating havoc on defense. She’s our Dennis Rodman. When we need her she comes through. As a freshman, what do you say? I’ve got three more years with her.”
“We came out and we didn’t give up,” Lazar added. “We just kept getting steals and getting rebounds.”
Eighth-ranked Neuqua Valley (11-1) jumped out to a 12-5 lead early, but the middle quarters belonged to the 15th-ranked Whip-Purs (12-1), who led by 5 when senior Alex Dumoulin scored with 3:33 to play in the fourth. Lazar tied the game at 40 almost a minute later, converting a fastbreak layup, then gave Neuqua Valley the lead on a putback at the 1:47 mark. After Dumoulin tied the game again with a pair of free throws, Lazar scored on another putback, was fouled and converted the three-point play with 1:16 left.
“We came to this tournament to be able to play a team like this and we got a great opportunity and we learned a lesson from it,” said Hampshire coach Ed Haugens. “When it came down to crunch time, we did a great job rebounding for three quarters, but that fourth quarter they got those extra offensive rebounds. That hurt us a lot.”
Hampshire tried frantically in the waning seconds to tie the game with a 3-point shot, but after calling a timeout with 1.7 seconds to go, the Whip-Purs couldn’t get a shot off.
“It went back and forth early,” said Williams, who admitted to being “spent” after the game, which was played at a frenetic pace. “I thought we had them, I thought they had us, we thought we had them again. It just came down to the very last shot, and that’s how it should be when you have two good teams.”
Freshman Malia Smith added 11 points for Neuqua Valley, which played three freshmen and claimed its second holiday tournament title of the season, having won at Hinsdale South at Thanksgiving.
“I knew we were going to be good when we were older, but I never thought we’d be good now,” Lazar said.
Dumoulin led all scorers with 15 points, and senior Karla Vietinghoff added 12 for Hampshire.
“We needed a close game. We needed a close game and we learned a lot about ourselves tonight,” said Haugens, whose team had won all but one of its games by double digits. “In terms of handling the pressure, I thought our girls did a great job. That was the biggest concern for me. But the rebounding and the decision-making on the offensive end that we need to fix from this one. We had more than enough opportunities and we just didn’t finish.”
But the Whip-Purs did impress the Wildcats.
“They don’t make many mistakes, they play hard to the very end, they’re well-coached, they’re gutty, they’re gritty, and really that’s where we are too,” Williams said. “I thought that was probably one of the best games that I’ve seen in a long time.”