Lamont Hamilton was already well known for his accomplishments on the football field and basketball court. On Saturday, the Racine St. Catherine’s senior took it one notch higher.
Hamilton’s final prep basketball appearance was a star turn as he dominated the WIAA Division 3 championship game, scoring 26 points and controlling the tempo in a 61-41 win over Seymour at the Kohl Center in Madison.
“It’s just a dog mentality,” said Hamilton, the Minnesota football recruit who also grabbed seven rebounds and three steals, as well as dishing five assists and shooting 11-of-15 from the field. “You’re always going to get everybody’s best shot if you’re going to be one of the best. It comes with the game.”
The Angels (24-4) completely shut down the top-seeded Thunder (28-2), which spent five weeks ranked No. 1 in the Bound Wisconsin/Zaleski Sports Division 3 poll. Seymour struggled to get into its offense and shot only 29 percent (13-of-45) from the field, including just 4-of-20 on three-point tries.
“We guarded as well as we could guard tonight, not just in the full court but in the half court,” Angels coach Ryan Thompson said. “We wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance if we had just played straight halfcourt (defense); they would have beaten us by 20 points,” Thompson said. “It had to be a combination of good half-court and guard those guards, and pressure them.”
St. Catherine’s led 22-15 at halftime of the physical matchup and the Thunder trailed only by 28-22 after Isaac Feske’s lay-in with 16:05 remaining. From that point, however, the Angels went on a 14-5 run over the next six minutes and led by at least a dozen points the rest of the way.
“We had one of our worst performances of the season against a really good team, so I have to give St. Cat’s a lot of credit,” Seymour coach Bobby Kuchta said. “We knew it was going to be physical and we had a tough time responding to that physical play.”
Kuchta also admitted that the Thunder this year had not faced major deficits and was
unaccustomed to rallying from them. Complicating that was that the Angels’ defense seemed to come in waves, according to Seymour senior Kyler Marks, who finished his high school career with a 13-point, 11-rebound performance.
“They are definitely faster and probably stronger than most teams we’ve faced,” Marks said. “You’d get caught up with one of them and another was there right away.”
Junior Isaac Feske added 10 points and seven rebounds for the Thunder, which has placed second at state six times since 1997 along with winning three state championships, although this marked Seymour’s first state tourney visit since 2011.
AC Contreras Ward added 12 points for St. Catherine’s, which began the season ranked No. 1 in the Bound Wisconsin/Zaleski Sports poll. The Angels captured their seventh state championship since 2005, the last coming in Division 3 in 2021, which was a post-COVID tournament played at the Oshkosh Arena.
