Hampton drops game to Daniel Boone
Published 1:37 pm Saturday, November 28, 2015
JONESBOROUGH–It was already hot inside the “Crockpot” Friday night even for fans, but then Daniel Boone turned up the heat on defense in the third quarter against Hampton Friday night and it turned into a fire that the Bulldogs could not contain.
Boone went to an obliterating press in the third quarter and Hampton struggled offensively, and that led to a 67-52 Blazers victory over the Bulldogs in the losers bracket at the David Crockett High School Gym, better known as the Crockpot.
The Bulldogs will take on arch-rival Johnson County today at 4 pm in the seventh-place game of the Hardee’s Classic.
The Blazers came out in the first half getting a tussle from the ‘Dogs, who are without seven football players at this point who play basketball, and Hampton for the second straight game gave the opponent all it wanted in the first half.
Then, in the second half, the heat got even hotter as Boone went to the relentless press that quickly blew what was a 28-26 Boone lead into a complete Blazer runaway.
Hampton was outscored 12-0 to start the second half thanks to the Boone press and then the Trailblazers all of a sudden held a 40-26 lead and the Bulldogs could not recover.
“We had a lot of turnovers, we didn’t get many good looks and they shot the lights out of it,” said Hampton head coach Ned Smith.
After switching from man to zone, nothing really changed for Hampton as the shots in the second half were not falling
Meanwhile Boone players like Ryan Keever, who led the ‘Blazers with 26 points, didn’t help out Hampton by shooting the lights out in the second half, outscoring the ‘Dogs 39-26 in the final 16 minutes.
“It didn’t change for us when they went to the zone,” said Smith. “We had a lot of turnovers in the second half and shot it really well.
The Bulldogs did get three in double figures as Chris Holtsclaw and Jared Andrews had 12 points and Charlie Butler had 11. Chris Timmons added nine and Jose Velazquez had two.
“They are getting valuable minutes,” said Smith. “They are getting better. Last two games we have competed for a half, now we have to compete for four quarters.”
