During Monday’s Division III boys’ basketball semifinals, when Hopkinton needs a lift, the Hawks will look to senior Kevin Newton-Delgado.
“He’s the motivator. We go where he goes,” Hopkinton coach Steve Signor said of Newton-Delgado, a 6-foot-4 senior forward. “If he brings that energy, he ignites the rest of the guys. If they see his energy out there, they truly believe the team is going to have success that night.”
Newton-Delgado recently passed the 1,000-point milestone, and he leads the team in scoring at 16.9 points per game. So the No. 4 Hawks (16-4) will certainly look to him when they need a big hoop against top-seeded Gilford (18-1) in Monday’s 8 p.m. semifinal at Keene State College. They can also look to their senior leader for pretty much anything else they might need.
He averages more than 10 rebounds per game and this season he has three triple doubles with points, rebounds and blocks. He can handle the ball and create shots for himself or teammates. He can break a press with his size and vision.
“I feel like I’m an all-around player now,” Newton-Delgado said.
But it wasn’t always that way.
He made the varsity team as a freshman with some high expectations, and those hopes weren’t dimmed when he scored 25 points in the first half of the first JV game of the season.
“I had to pull him at halftime,” Signor recalled. “I said, ‘Ok, maybe it’s time to play big-boy basketball.’”
Newton-Delgado stayed with the big boys that entire season, but he never cracked the starting lineup on a talented team He was a rebounder and shot blocker off the bench as the Hawks went 18-3 and reached the D-III semifinals. He wound up with 99 points that season, which felt a long way from the 1,000 he was aiming for.
“I was saying that since my freshman year, that I want to score 1,000,” Newton-Delgado said. “But after that year, I was like, ‘I don’t know, that’s a lot of points.’”
He earned a spot in the starting lineup as a sophomore, and his scoring increased with his minutes. He kept crashing the boards and playing defense, and he helped Hopkinton to a 17-3 season, but his offensive game was still limited. That changed during the summer as Newton-Delgado went to work with a new diligence. He returned as a junior with improved ball handling and vision. He played with a new confidence and willingness to make decisions, leading the Hawks to a 13-7 mark.
This season he’s added another key piece – the outside shot. He would take it before, but now his jumper is a weapon. Take his 1,000th point as an example, which came on a step-back 3-pointer on Feb. 25 at Hillsboro-Deering.
“That’s just the kind of kid he is,” Signor said. “You would think his 1,000th point would come on a dunk or an offensive rebound putback or something like that, but he just keeps developing his game, and this year it was the confidence in that outside shot.”
Newton-Delgado hit some jumpers off the dribble that helped open up the paint for Hopkinton in its 68-50 quarterfinal win against No. 5 Winnisquam. Once the inside opened, he showed that he hadn’t forgotten the other parts of his all-around game by crashing the glass, attacking the rim and throwing down one memorable dunk.
“That dunk was great,” Newton-Delgado said. “I’ve never seen our crowd so crazy in my life.”
He’ll need all parts of his game on Monday night against No. 1 Gilford, which has already beaten the Hawks once this season. The Golden Eagles pulled out a 61-57 comeback win in Hopkinton on Feb. 21. Newton-Delgado had 23 points in that one, but Gilford’s 6-4 senior leader, Adrian Siravo, had 25 points, including 16 in the second half.
“When I think of playing Gilford and Adrian, it’s like looking into a mirror,” Newton-Delgado said. “Same size, same athleticism, and I know what he’s going to do, and he knows what I’m going to do.”
Signor said the two teams also mirror each other in terms of length and athleticism, and the coach thinks that if one group of bigs can claim the upper hand on the glass it could be the difference. If the interior guys cancel each other out, including the Newton-Delgado vs. Siravo matchup, than Signor feels good about putting the game in the hands of his senior point guard, Shepyrd Murdough, who is averaging 10.2 points per game.
“Shepyrd has really played well the last four or five weeks, he’s playing like the all-state player I always knew he was,” Signor said.
The Hawks also have a capable outside marksman in senior guard Michael Baer, a 6-5 center in senior Luke Reidy and an athletic wing in 6-3 junior Owen Milchick.
But when it comes to the deciding moments, no matter what those moments call for, the Hawks will be looking for Newton-Delgado.
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20)