What we learned during Showcase Saturday basketball games in Springfield

Jake Hamilton and Zach Hawkinson combined for 32 points and 16 rebounds but more importantly, Sacred Heart-Griffin dominated Lanphier 61-40 in the final game on Saturday of the Springfield Clinic Sports Medicine/Sports Radio 92.3/1450 Capital City Showcase at the Bank of Springfield Center.

SHG and Lanphier came into the season as the ballyhooed favorites of the Central State Eight Conference. But on Saturday, there was a large divide between the teams.

The Cyclones (5-2) have won five straight games.

SHG led 31-18 at halftime. If fans expected to see a spirited response from Lanphier to start the third quarter, it was quickly thwarted.

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Lanphier’s Tye Banks attacked the bucket for a layup to start the third, but Hamilton responded with a turnaround jumper. Banks again got to the paint, parallel to the baseline and flipped in another bucket. But Will and Jake Hamilton combined for the next three SHG shots and Lanphier would never be closer.

“We just wanted to make (Lanphier) shoot shots (instead of driving to the rim) and hope they miss,” SHG coach Tim Allen said. “Today they were off and I don’t expect that the next time we play. They’re a great team and a well-coached program.”

Jake Hamilton finished with 18 points, seven rebounds, four assists and was 8-for-15 shooting. Hawkinson netted 14 points with nine rebounds and was 5-for-8 shooting and made four of six free throws. Will Hamilton finished with 10 points for the Cyclones.

JaiQuan Holman led Lanphier with 13 points.

“We started out slow, our offense was stagnant, I don’t like the way we shared the ball — I thought we did a bad job moving the ball; it’s like the ball died every time we passed — we’d pass and we’d watch the guy with the ball,” Lanphier coach Blake Turner said. “I was real disappointed in our offensive effort, I was disappointed in our defensive effort (and) I was really disappointed in our effort overall. This is not the idea of what we have with a Lanphier basketball team.”

'Statement win' for SHG

Allen has been on the winning side against Lanphier before. At the 2020 City Tournament, SHG hit a shot at the buzzer to send the game into overtime. The Cyclones prevailed 57-56.

But winning in dominating fashion is a meaningful win for the SHG program, Allen said.

“Any time you beat a great program like Lanphier, it’s good,” Allen said.

Hawkinson said the team was thrilled with how the Cyclones controlled everything.

“This is a statement win for sure,” Hawkinson said. “We knew they were going to bring it and we had to bring it all, too. This is a big game. I think we proved our point; we proved the whole city wrong.”

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As great as the win was for the SHG program, Allen said there was already talk about what the team could’ve done better.

“I’ve only had my guys (the full team) for three days and they executed everything we wanted them to do,” Allen said. “And we got coaches still screaming because we think we can play even better than that.

“We can play a lot better.”

Lanphier has fuel to get better

In his postgame remarks to his team, Lanphier coach Blake Turner was measured. His voice didn’t raise but he was firm: the team has to bring better effort in the future.

“We’ve got to get back to work and use this as a learning experience,” Turner said. “We don’t want to feel this way. It’s one bad game, we’ve got 30 of them.”

Turner knows because of the sustained success of Lanphier, the Lions tend to receive their share of maximum efforts.

“Lanphier basketball, we get everybody’s best shot,” Turner said. “Everybody circles us on their schedule, everybody is going to give us their best shot. In essence, this was their Super Bowl.

“They had their real Super Bowl (the Class 4A state football championship game, a 56-27 loss to Joliet Catholic) last week and they lost. That’s what that school is about: playing for state championships and they had it and they lost. This was their consolation match — let’s go show Lanphier we’ve got a basketball team that can contend for a state title, too — and our kids knew that.

“That was the challenge we were supposed to meet and we didn’t and they enforced their will on us.”

Lanphier gets another shot at SHG, and on the same floor too, in next month’s City Tournament.

Southeast is still an unknown factor

Southeast coach Lawrence Thomas would love to have his full roster of players but he’s been able to squeeze a 4-1 start, including a 52-49 overtime win over Springfield High, out of a fluid roster.

Kam Banks returned for the first time this season for the Spartans and finished with 10 points on 4-for-13 shooting. But Seth Doss and Dom Hobbs were unavailable.

Only E.J. Alexander, Ke’Shawn Smith, Omar Abdul-Rahim and Jaylen Newman have played all five games.

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“I’m looking forward to the day when I can coach our whole team,” Thomas said. “I think we can be very competitive this year. I like our group of kids, I like where we’re at, I like what I see ahead for this team … but we need everyone. I think when we get everyone, some people who already think they know what they don’t know will find out that we can be pretty good.”

Abdul-Rahim scored a team-high 15 while Smith added 14 for the Spartans.

Southeast overcame a slow start — and trailed by 11 points in the second quarter. The Spartans never panicked.

“That’s not who we are as a team, that’s not who I am as a coach,” LT said. “Now don’t get me wrong: it ain’t our goal to be down 13-2.”

Springfield High bounced back

One night after losing 64-61 to Auburn, Springfield High coach Joby Crum said he didn’t see any carryover from the stinging loss.

“We emphasize every night is a new thing whether you win or lose the night before,” Crum said. “I thought we came out, we had the game played at the tempo we wanted to play at, we jumped up early … I thought we had some good looks at the basket. In overtime, we had two fast-breaks we got nothing out of.”

Artez Hanson led the Senators with 21 points and Mitchell Logan had 17. Brandenn Robinson led SHS with 13 rebounds while Logan had 12.

Jacksonville can’t go cold

Jacksonville led Decatur Eisenhower 8-3 at the end of the first quarter and held onto an 11-10 lead at halftime. But Eisenhower blew the game open with a 22-7 edge in the third and put the game away by outscoring Jacksonville 16-3 in the final period for a 48-21 win.

Jacksonville didn’t have any player with more than two buckets.

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New system coming in nicely at Glenwood

It takes a while for any new coach to install a system but trying to do so after following a 16-season-tenured coach is even harder.

Kirkpatrick said things are going well overall, especially after Glenwood beat Rochester 57-32. Eli Curtis led Glenwood with 18, Parker Detmers had 14 and Wes Anderson finished with 10, nine boards, four steals and two assists.

“It’s gotten a lot better,” Kirkpatrick said of his players adapting to his system after Todd Blakeman coached the Titans for 16 seasons. “When fatigue sets in and things like that, you always resort to what you’ve always done. But that part is starting to get better and their habits are becoming the habits we want.”

New Berlin makes it tough inside

Madison may have pulled out a 44-33 win in the opener of the Showcase, but New Berlin made it tough.

New Berlin’s interior defense finally frustrated Madison coach Phillip Gilbert enough he yelled to his players from the other end of the floor that they needed to shoot more and stop trying to force the ball inside.

“We’ve got a good team and we played a good team today,” New Berlin coach Blake Lucas said. “Our system is built for that kind of game. I talked to (Gilbert) after the game and he said, ‘I saw what you doing’ and I said ‘To be honest, that’s what we do every game.’

“If you can beat us from the outside … they shot the ball a little better than I thought.”

But Lucas did say the Pretzels beat themselves at times.

“Just missing bunnies and not executing not sticking to the game plan,” Lucas said. “After the game, we had an awesome talk … but I told them, ‘Look how close we are.’”

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: IHSA basketball: What we learned from Showcase Saturday at BOS Center