West Fork squeaks away from Bulldogs

HAMPTON — Following a letter from long-time Bulldog boys’ basketball coach Heath Walton, his Bulldogs and West Fork battled to the end in the annual Coaches vs. Cancer game.

Walton, who is sitting out this season with concerns over COVID-19 as he recovers from another round of chemotherapy and treatments for Hodgkins Lymphoma, was absolutely watching the live stream as the game unfolded, a 57-51 win for the Warhawks.

“We’ve all been in contact, every day this year,” Bulldog interim coach Matt Lokenvitz said. “It’s tough, especially when you have this type of game, an emotional game. It makes you want to go out and do the best you possibly can for someone like that. Yeah, he wants to be there.

“He calls us all the time, texts us all the time. Giving the kids encouraging words on Nevermind apps and those type of things. We all want him here. This isn’t really what anyone wanted to happen this year.”

Walton wasn’t the only coach for the Bulldogs missing for this game, that had to move its silent auction online because of COVID concerns and fewer spectators allowed.

“Now we’ve got Mike (Holm) with a knee issue that he’s going to have repaired this week and Norm (his dad) is suffering from some cancer stuff, too,” Lokenvitz said. “It’s a tough situation going through the basketball family.

“Obviously, this game hits home for us as a H-D/CAL basketball program and it’s really tough for us to get through this, but ultimately, it’s the next day and Heath would say, ‘don’t cry over me and get out there and work your butts off and play hard.’ So, that’s what we try to do every day that we’re out there.”

Inspired, the Bulldogs played hard defense and held the Warhawks’ leading scorer, Kayden Ames, to a season-low three points. In fact, his only field goal came with one minute, 39 seconds remaining the game.

“That’s what we talked about,” Lokenvitz said. “He’s averaging 18 a game and what-not, so we have to hold him down. And we did, but we didn’t…in holding their best player down, we also had to play defense on their other players.

“We would, like, the Maske kid, we left him wide-open for threes instead of closing out hard. Ingham got offensive rebounds. He only shot twice, where he had to go back to the basket, make a move. We just couldn’t keep him off the glass. Offensive rebound and after rebound after rebound.”

West Fork head coach Frank Schnoes recognized both Ingham and Maske stepping up with Ames struggling against the Bulldog defense.

“I think the key the to game was the play of Joe Ingham and also the play of Noah Maske,” Schnoes said. “We usually struggle if we’re not going to get much scoring from Kayden and tonight he was really struggling with some open looks.”

Ingham finished with 13 overall rebounds six of them were on the offensive end for put-backs. It felt like more to Lokenvitz.

“They had 12 offensive rebounds and I would bet he had 10 of them,” Lokenvitz said. “If you can’t rebound, just get a step in away from the basket and he’s 6-foot-5, that’s tough.”

West Fork had a big 18-9 third quarter advantage with Maske hitting a pair of threes and Ingham put-backs that ultimately allowed the Warhawks to pull this one out. A concerted second half of the fourth quarter by the Bulldogs allowed them to outscore the Warhawks 10-5 in the final 4:13.

That included a steal and score by Severs with only a few seconds to go that provided the difference.

“Happy with our defensive intensity, but disappointed in how we took care of the ball on offense, particularly on the transition game,” Schnoes said. “I thought we got a little careless and sloppy doing that.

“Give Hampton credit, they’ve got some quickness and they took advantage of that and battled us really tough.”

West Fork 57

Bulldogs 51

WF             13   17   18     9      -   57

Bulldogs    11   16     9   15      -   51

West Fork (10-2)— Kayden Ames 1-15 1-3 3, Jakob Washington 1-3 0-0 2, Ren Heimer 1-5 0-0 2, Cail Weaver 2-4 1-5 5, Joe Ingham 8-11 2-2 18, Noah Maske 3-6 6-6 14, Colin Martinek 2-5 4-4 8, Edison Caspers 2-3 1-2 5. Totals 20-52 15-21 57.

Bulldogs (3-12)— Jordan Severs 5-13 1-1 11, Mario De La Cruz 5-12 2-2 13, Jace Spurgeon 3-6 0-0 7, Riley Heeren 2-2 0-0 5, Marco Guerrero 2-5 0-1 5, Cal Heeren 3-9 8, Benji Sauke 0-1 0-0 0, Colin Hill 0-2 0-0 0, Scott Harr 0-2 0-2 0, Payton McNealy 1-2 0-0 2. Totals 21-54 3-6 51.

Rebounds— WF 33 (Ingham 13, Washington 7, Ames 4, Martinek 3, Heimer 2, Weaver 2, Maske, Caspers); H-D 31 (Severs 10, De La Cruz 7, C. Heeren 6, McNealy 3, Hill 2, R. Heeren, Guerrero, Sauke). Assists— WF 13 (Heimer 3, Weaver 3, Washington 2, Maske 2, Martinek 2, Ames); H-D 12 (Severs 3, De La Cruz 2, C. Heeren 2, McNealy 2, Guerrero, Hill, Harr). Steals— WF 14 (Weaver 6, Ingham 3, Washington 2, Heimer, Maske, Caspers); H-D (De La Cruz 3, Severs 2, Guerro, Harr). Blocks— WF, None; H-D 2 (Severs, McNealy). Fouls— WF 6, H-D 17. Fouled out, None.