High school basketball in the west-suburban DuPage Valley Conference is all about solid screens and midrange jumpers, so when an underclassman dunks during a varsity game, the fans still go nuts. Especially when that underclassman is an underclasswoman.
It’s just after 11 AM on Martin Luther King Day, bitterly cold, and Parker steps off the team bus at Willowbrook High School, walking slowly and listening to Jay-Z on her Discman. Naperville Central is scheduled to play at 1:30 against Chaminade-Julienne of Dayton, Ohio–another nationally ranked team–in the 13th annual Chicagoland Girls Prep Classic. The Redhawks are dressed head to toe in gear provided by Adidas, including sweatshirts lettered with a modified Eminem lyric: “We’ve only got one shot” on the front and “Success is our only option, failure is not” on the back. Whatever it refers to, most of the starters in fact have more than one shot: six-foot forward Courtney Peters is the only senior of the five.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“Hey, where’s Candace?” she calls, pointing to a basketball that’s wedged between the rim and backboard. “We need some help.”
Candace and her teammates hit the bleachers to watch the Fenwick-Beavercreek game. Most scouting services rank Lawless and Bales among the top 25 high school girls in the nation, and both of them have already committed to top-tier women’s programs for the fall–Lawless to Purdue, Bales to Duke. Lawless is wiry and athletic, active on defense, and she cuts across the lane tirelessly on offense, launching short turnaround jumpers. Bales is a good interior passer, and though she’s inert on defense, she’s really tall, and that works in a largely terrestrial game. She hits robotic half hooks over a defense that can’t reach her, but Fenwick leads 31-20 at the half.
After that Parker controls the quarter. She catches a pass at the post surrounded by three defenders, dribbles out along the baseline, then passes to Rachel Crissy, a five-foot-eight junior, at the top of the key. Crissy holds the ball, she and Parker make eye contact, and Parker streaks toward the basket. Crissy lobs toward the rim as Parker leaps, catches, adjusts in midair, and lays it in, drawing the foul.
Nussbaum sends Parker back in with 5:07 left, and Hoskins takes advantage of her precarious foul situation, aggressively diving through the lane for another layup and cutting Naperville Central’s lead to just four points. Parker beats the defense down the court and scores, then rips down a defensive rebound, elbows swinging. She catches the ball in the post, draws a foul, and hits one of two free throws; she makes a quick baseline move for another two. But Hoskins continues her fearless bombing, hitting a short jumper to pull her team within two with 11.8 seconds remaining in the game.
“Candace can play any position, one through five,” says Bret McCormick, a former coach at Marshall University who now scouts basketball talent for All-Star Girls Report. “She doesn’t seem to have weaknesses.” He compares Parker to Cheryl Miller, a three-time national player of the year when she was at the University of Southern California in the 80s: “She played inside and outside and dominated the game like Candace.”
