MURFREESBORO — Who needs the luck of the Irish when you’ve got Cadon Buckles?
The Hampton senior and Mr. Basketball finalist sliced and diced through Chattanooga Prep’s defense all day in a 53-43 win in Friday’s BlueCross Basketball Championships Class 1A state semifinals inside MTSU’s Murphy Center.
Buckles netted a game-high 29 points on 12-for-16 shooting along with a pair of assists to lift the Bulldogs (28-8) to their first state title championship game appearance since 1983. Buckles made 11 of his final 14 shots.
“I was just trying to take what the defense gave me,” Buckles said. “When there was an open lane to the bucket, I took it. When there wasn’t, I was going to try to get my teammates involved. Luckily, that was enough to get us the win.”
Hampton will play top-ranked Middleton, which improved to 30-1 by defeating semifinal foe University High 66-50 — on Saturday at 5 p.m. (EDT). The Bulldogs will try to bring home their first state title since winning a one-classification tournament way back in 1960 when Buck Van Huss was coaching the squad.
“The kids played great and played super on defense,” said Hampton’s Ned Smith, who will make his first state title game appearance as a coach. “We didn’t allow them to get too many offensive rebounds. We thought if we could get a lot of one-and-done possessions, that would be the key.
“It’s awesome to get to the title game and it’s a great feeling.”
Hampton never trailed in the game and held a lengthy Sentinels squad to just 15-of-48 shooting for the game and 20 points through the first three quarters.
Spectacular defensively the whole contest, Hampton outrebounded Chattanooga Prep 33-20. Hayden Campbell was a big part of that, grabbing 10 boards and blocking four shots for the Bulldogs while scoring seven points.
“I wanted to play straight up and not foul,” Campbell said. “Another key was to block out everybody off the board and keep them from getting second and third opportunities. I had to play big and be strong.”
The Sentinels (29-9) were nervous from the start and never got into any sort of rhythm offensively. Derrick Roberson led the way with 12 points while Eli Gaines had 11.
“We don’t have anything to hang our heads on,” Chattanooga Prep coach Christoffer Collins said. “We’ll bounce back like we do all the time. We took a tough lesson in this one.
“The first half was really the difference because we were nervous and I don’t remember the last time we scored single digits in the first quarter. We were so anxious that it got to the point where we couldn’t run our offense.”
The Bulldogs, who normally shoot the long ball at a decent clip, missed all four of their 3-point attempts, but were 18-of-30 from inside the arc.
It was in Prep’s game plan to cut off the paint, especially to Buckles, but it wasn’t properly executed.
“We gave them the scouting report and it said that (Buckles) goes underneath every ball screen,” Collins said. “There were too many times where we went over the top and that allowed him to get in the paint.
“The study guide was there, but they failed the test.”
Chattanooga Prep got the lead down to as few as nine points (41-32) with 3:19 left, but four straight made free throws by Buckles and Eugene Carrico pushed the lead back out to double-digits and sealed the game.
Carrico played a solid game, finishing with 12 points and eight rebounds in 26 minutes.