Boys basketball: Princeton’s Grady Thompson late add to Illinois All-Star team

Princeton’s Grady Thompson will play for the Illinois All-Stars against the Iowa All-Stars at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Augustana College in Rock Island.

Thompson, along with Jase Whiteman of Rockridge were late adds to the Illinois roster Sunday evening in place of Moline’s Owen Freeman and Brock Harding, both University of Iowa recruits.

“It’s pretty sweet. I think it’ll be a fun game to play in,” Thompson said.

Thompson and Whiteman last met playing for the sectional championship in Geneseo with Whiteman leading the Rockets to a 64-46 win over the Tigers.

Thompson will also participate in the dunk contest. He joked that he has a few dunks up his sleeve, “but can’t give them away yet.”

The girls game will start at 6 p.m.

Monroe in accident: Princeton senior basketball player Kolten Monroe was in a single-car accident Sunday morning. His mother, Patty, said on Facebook he fractured his C5 vertebrae in his neck and broke his tailbone, but no surgery is necessary. He is moving all extremities and passed all the neuro exams, she said, adding, “He is lucky to be alive.”

Tragedy strikes Prairie Central: A tragic sledding accident in Colorado claimed the lives of two starters of the Fairbury Prairie Central boys basketball team, which was ranked No. 1 in Class 2A this season.

The Pontiac Daily Leader reported that Dylan Bazzell and Drew Fehr, who just started Spring Break, were killed when they were launched while riding a tandem off a large snowbank onto the ice, sustaining blunt force trauma.

Bazzell and Fehr were both key members of the Hawks’ conference and regional basketball champions as well as the Hawks’ 3A quarterfinal football team this year. Both were juniors on the Hawks football team that lost at Princeton in the second round of the playoffs in 2021.

Bazzell’s dad, Darin, is the Hawks’ head basketball coach.