The Hampton-Dumont-CAL boys basketball team couldn’t overcome a slow start, and fell 78-50 at North Polk in a 3A Substate 2 first round game Monday, as aired on 104.9 KLMJ.
Playing for the first time in over a week, the Bulldogs struggled to hit shots early. The Comets found their rhythm immediately, jumping out to a 19-4 lead after the first quarter. The Bulldogs outscored their opponent 17-14 in the second quarter, but a lack of scoring by Brady Harr throughout the first half made it difficult to come back. Harr picked up the pace in the second half, helping the team cut the deficit to 11. But the 3-point shooting of North Polk helped seal the game.
“You could tell nerves were a play in there,” Head Coach Matt Lokenvitz says. “Couldn’t catch the ball real cleanly, looked at the basket. The last two weeks we’ve talked about it multiple times how much better we were playing. And that was because we were able to catch, shoot with confidence, do those things. Everything we didn’t do here tonight where we just were real shy in wanting to shoot the basketball. We didn’t want to drive against anything. And as soon as they saw that, they just started double teaming down low on Brady. And then it was tough to get him the ball. They jumped out to that 19-4 lead, and then we were down 18 at one point in the first half. We got it down to eight, and then it seemed like about 40 seconds we went four turnovers in a row with with layups and then they just pushed it back out to 16, tried to get it back down, had it to 12 at halftime and then again we just didn’t show like we really wanted to be there in the third quarter.”
Harr led with 23 points, and Caden Woods added 10.
Their season has ended at 7-15.
