HAMPDEN, Maine — The Brewer Witches boys basketball team has only lost three games so far this season, two of them now to the Hampden Academy Broncos.
Hampden outdueled Brewer for a 59-52 home victory Friday night, after notching a previous six-point win in early January. The Witches fell to 13-3, still good enough for second in Class A North, and the Broncos remain right behind them in third place at 12-4.
It was a bounce-back win for Hampden, having dropped a close game to Camden Hills at home on Tuesday night. Hampden Coach Russ Bartlett felt his team’s defense was lacking in that loss, but walked away from Friday’s game feeling much better.
“I thought we defended really well,” Bartlett said. “I thought we guarded with a little more urgency tonight.”
The Broncos and Witches played an evenly matched and exciting first half, with early turnovers for both teams giving way to steady back and forth of scoring. The teams traded buckets and leads, with Brewer up 16-15 at the end of the first quarter.
Brewer freshman forward Oli Higgins provided the flashiest play of the first quarter, with a break-away dunk that had the away fans roaring. And while hustle may not show up on a scoresheet, Hampden senior forward Andy Henaghen showed plenty of it to get things going, and throughout the game, gaining his team at least one extra possession in the first quarter with a diving play to secure a jump ball. Bartlett said that’s the kind of play he expects from Henaghen.
“He’s like Dennis Rodman, for lack of a better term, without the tattoos,” Bartlett said. “Just a lot of hustle.”
It was that kind of hustle across the board that paid off for the Broncos Friday night.
“They got every loose ball,” Brewer Coach Carl Parker noted after the game, saying his team was both outcoached and outplayed. “They were tougher than us, tougher physically than us.”
Hampden took a 29-25 lead into halftime, and the teams went back and forth to start the third quarter. But after a steal by junior guard Sawyer Worcester set up a layup by junior forward Liam Henaghen, the Broncos led 35-34 and never trailed the rest of the game. Worcester added an acrobatic fadeaway jumper soon after to put Hampden up by five. The Witches stuck around and kept the game interesting, largely because of senior guard Steven Youngs’ impressive 12 points in the fourth quarter.
A few missed foul shots in the second half didn’t help Hampden close things out, though they eventually found their form at the line to seal the win.
“We’ve shot 72 percent on the season as a group, and this is the first game all year that we’ve missed some late,” Bartlett explained. “Luckily it didn’t come back to bite us.”
Senior guard Aiden Kochendoerfer and Liam Henaghen led the way for the Broncos with 18 points each.
Bartlett called Kochendoerfer “the pulse of what we do of what we do on both ends of the floor.”
Kochendoerfer said he isn’t really too concerned about the attention he gets from other teams’ defenses, puts trust in his teammates to get the job done and focuses on wins rather than stat lines.
“I don’t even care,” he said with a smile when asked if he wanted to know how many points he had Friday night.
“We played a great game, and everyone played their hardest,” Kochendoerfer said. “We came out, attacked them, and we did what we needed to do.”
Both he and his coach said they felt good responding to Tuesday night’s loss with a Friday win.
“It’s just about trying to play really good basketball right now going into the tournament,” Bartlett said.
Brewer’s last two regular season games will be next week against Nokomis on Feb. 4 and Bangor on Feb. 6. Hampden will play Bangor on Feb. 4 and Oceanside on Feb. 6.
