There was a point in the season – not all that long ago – when the eyes of the Dreadnaughts turned to Drew Bishop. The Dexter basketball team had lost its first three games and despite being close, the team was 0-3 and looking for answers.
So they turned to Bishop, the team’s senior guard. He handles the ball. He runs the offense. And he has the varsity experience.
“We were 0-3 and playing Bedford and we talked about being a desperate team and we have been desperate ever since,” said Coach Tim Cain.
Last Tuesday night, Dexter knocked off state-ranked Ypsilanti and followed it up with Friday’s win over Pinckney. The Dreadnaughts have won six straight after the rough start and while the whole team has picked things up and are playing more to their potential, it’s that senior guard who has taken charge.
This is clearly Drew Bishop’s team to run. The point guard with the great ball-handling skills who can shoot it and pass it is growing with confidence and his teammates are running right alongside him straight into the win column.
“Drew was unselfish to a fault,” Cain said after the win over Ypsilanti. “And now he is becoming more aggressive. And the kid can really handle the ball. He’s got the pull-back dribble now and he’s just an explosive player.”
Bishop didn’t even shoot all that well against Ypsilanti. But he was clearly running the offense and running it clearly in the right direction.
“He controlled the game for us and I’m just very proud of him,” Cain said. “He’s not stopping here. He is taking this Dexter program to the next level and then he’s going to go do the same thing for a college basketball program. I’m excited for him about his future.”
His future is right now for the time being. Dexter has some solid players in the starting lineup and coming off the bench. They have some guys who can shoot it and they have some big guys underneath who can not only control the paint but dominate inside as well.
They have knocked off Chelsea and Ypsilanti. They have the whole SEC White Division to play again, but this time confidence is on their side. And so is Drew Bishop.
“We just had to figure things out,” says Bishop of the team’s 0-3 start. “We started playing better and playing more as a team. We started to trust each other and that’s a big part of it. Even our practices started to pick up and that has carried over to the games.”
Bishop is in his third year on the varsity team and Tuesday’s win was the first over Ypsilanti, the dominant team in the SEC White for years.
“It felt great,” he said. “I told my coach last year that we aren’t losing to Chelsea and we aren’t losing to Ypsi ever again. We showed a lot (Tuesday). Everyone played great. We hit some huge shots, got huge rebounds and made big defensive stops when we needed them.”
Bishop plans on taking his game to the next level after high school. He’s been looking at a few schools and hearing from a few but nothing is in the works at the moment.
“I’m just looking for some place I’m comfortable at, can play four years at and something that fits me academically in math or science,” he said.
College athletes run in the Bishop family. His sister August was an outstanding volleyball player at Dexter HS and now plays at Rhodes College in Memphis.
But before Drew draws up his college plans he has work to do right here in Dexter. The ball is clearly in his capable hands.
