BRUNSWICK, Maine — It was a game defensively that the Hampden Academy girls basketball team (1-2) wishes went the other way on Friday night against Brunswick, committing 37 turnovers that helped lead the host Dragons (2-1) to a 46-36 Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference victory at Brunswick High School.
“Just a lot of turnovers,” Broncos head coach Tim Scott said simply after the game, “We’re still making those young cross-court passes that don’t get through at this level now. We didn’t start well and we didn’t start in the third period well, it got us in a hole. But they battled back and we were able to cut it to seven at half and (seven) in the fourth quarter, so I’m proud of them for doing that, we just got to take care of the basketball a little better.”
“We’re really good at pressing,” Dragons senior guard Julia Champagne said. “We have a lot of guards on our team so we like to get there and pressure the ball so they create turnovers.”
The slow start by the Broncos was caused by an early 11-0 run put together by the Dragons to open up the game, with Hampden’s first basket coming only at the 3:22 marker in the first quarter. However, Brunswick was only able to put up one more shot in the remainder of the quarter, a pattern displayed throughout the contest.
“It was a game of us doing what we wanted then stopped doing it,” Dragons coach Sam Farrell said. “Early on we forced the tempo, got steals and I mean how many layups did we miss in the first half (11-29 from the field)? That would have put the game away, and free throws, we were 1-for-8 from the line in the first and we came out in the second half, took charge again and in the waning moments we tended to give it back to them.”
Brunswick buried three shots to increase its lead by six points to start the second quarter, but the Broncos battled, tallying 11 points to end the second frame, while keeping the Dragons second quarter total at 10. Due to the up-down tempo of the Dragons performance, Champagne’s 12 first-half points seemed more of a distant memory, though it proved to make a difference.
“Her effort was contagious with her teammates,” Farrell said of Champagne. “You can see it, when she was pressing the ball up front, other kids got steals. Against them she scored inside, outside, our game is to get her the ball and I think her teammates did a really good job of playing off her and getting her the ball.”
“We didn’t know a lot about them,” Champagne said of her team’s knowledge of Hampden. “We knew they had a lot of freshmen, so we had to pressure them a lot, but we came out really hard at first, I think we thought we had it but they came back. We came out hard at halftime and we didn’t look back after that.”
Champagne ended the night with 25 points against a deceptive Broncos squad that started four freshmen, a move that Scott said is one that they earned.
“It’s just the way it unfolded,” he said. “All the girls have worked hard and right now it’s the lineup we’re going with and we’ll see if it pans out the rest of the year or not, but they’ve done well the past three games, but you can see the young mistakes.”
Brooklynn Scott, one of Hampden’s six freshmen on the team ended the game with nine points of her own, joining senior guard Erin Murphy who also had nine, while fresman Marissa Gilpin was a force on defense, totaling six rebounds and three steals.
Though both teams shared frustrations throughout the game, the combined feeling of being at an early stage of the season is one that forces a “have no doubts” mindset.
“We’re just going to keep working,” Scott said. “Just trying to keep everyone positive, it’s three games, we have 15 left and just try to sneak out a few along the way and we’ll see where it gets us.”
“We got Lewiston next and Lewiston always plays us tough,” Farrell said. “It’s a pretty heated rivalry. I know they graduated a lot, but they have some returning kids who can play. It’s always a dragged out game, I mean the first time we played them last year it took a buzzer beater, but we’ll take a win any way we can get it.”
The Broncos came away draining eight of 10 freebies and led the floor with a team total 27 rebounds, while the Dragons knocked off 20 of 49 shots. Of the Broncos 37 turnovers, Dragons Madeline Suhr managed to collect 10 steals.