Whips back in BN-E contention
The end of the world? No.
But a second loss to Burlington Central would have undercut any aspirations Hampshire's girls basketball team held of winning the Big Northern Conference's Eastern Division this year.
The Rockets defeated Hampshire 58-48 on Dec. 7, so a season sweep would have put the Whip-Purs behind Central by 2 games and a tiebreaker at the midpoint of the conference campaign.
Well, consider the BN-E race alive and well.
Hampshire freshman Alex Dumoulin scored a game-high 16 points and grabbed 9 rebounds, and the Whip-Purs held Central's top three scorers -- Jordan Maisto, Melanie Laird and Cory Bazany -- to 21 combined points to earn a 45-31 victory in the final game between these two rivals at the Purple Palace.
"I didn't want to come out and be gloom and doom, but I tell you what: our backs were against the wall," Hampshire coach Sue Ellett said. "That was a must-win game. You put two checks in the loss column against Burlington with none? You're counting on a lot of people to do a lot of work for us, and we like to do our own work."
Hampshire shot just 30 percent from the field (13 of 43), but the Whips were able to limit Central to 27-percent shooting (10 of 37).
Hampshire (11-7, 4-1) jumped to a 9-4 lead after a quarter on the strength of 4 buckets in the paint from Alex Dumoulin
"I had so many good passes," Dumoulin said. "That helped. I just did what I'm supposed to do: rebound and keep helping the team. I can't say enough for my guards and posts. They fed me."
Hampshire led 17-12 at the half and 23-18 after three periods, partly because the defensive scheme drawn up by assistant coach Brian Gilbert enabled the Whips to hold Maisto and Bazany without a field goal in the first half and partly because Laird picked up her fourth foul early in the third quarter.
With Laird on the bench for much of the period, Burlington Central (12-6, 3-1) had a difficult time finding scoring opportunities against Hampshire's 2-3 zone defense.
"Normally, we work pretty well against a 2-3 zone," Bazany said. "But Mel got in foul trouble and she usually directs a lot of the traffic from the middle. When she wasn't in there, I definitely think it threw things off for us and it took a little while to figure out what we were doing."
The Rockets know it's now a race.
"We're still in a good position," Central coach Darlene Guyette said. "This is a tough stretch. You need to play tough basketball down the stretch.
"But really, to keep this in perspective, we went 10 years and never beat Hampshire. So, in the last two seasons to be splitting with them, we're pretty OK with that."