Suburban Life boys basketball notes: Michigan football recruit Nathaniel Marshall key to Fenwick’s 13-3 start

Fenwick senior Nathaniel Marshall is a star in football, a freak athlete as a 6-foot-5, 270-pound defensive lineman who is headed to Michigan as one of the nation’s top prospects.

Just ask his basketball coach.

“I think he is a pro athlete playing high school sports,” Fenwick coach David Fergerson said.

The coach-player relationship runs much deeper in basketball, though.

Fergerson has known Marshall since the coach first moved to Chicago 12 years ago. Marshall’s mom and Fergerson’s wife, Fenwick girls basketball coach Lenae Fergerson, played together at DePaul.

Marshall was on Fergerson’s first AAU team back in fourth grade and stuck with it all the way through eighth grade.

So Fergerson wasn’t surprised to see Marshall stick with basketball his senior year, rather than give it up to gear up for college football.

“I got a feeling he would play. I know how much he loves playing basketball,” Fergerson said. “For me, it’s great.”

Fergerson’s Friars have been quite good.

Led by Marshall and guards Ty Macariola and Dominick Ducree, Fenwick reached the championship game of the Jack Tosh Holiday Classic and is 13-3 going into January. The Friars served notice in December with wins over Mount Carmel and Peoria, and have kept rolling.

Surprising? Not to Fergerson.

“We have maybe surprised some teams in the state but am I surprised? No, to be honest with you,” Fergerson said. “I knew what I had. Humbly, I say respectfully when you have a Nate Marshall coming off your bench, a guy going to Michigan, I think I’m in pretty good shape. I’m not surprised at all. We put the work in.”

Indeed, Fergerson knew he had something brewing from the summer.

Without any of the six football players on the Fenwick basketball team, including Marshall, the Friars went 27-4 in the summer and fall.

“We were keeping track of wins and losses. Nobody keeps track, but we were,” Fergerson said. “We knew that once those football dudes came it would only enhance what we already have. I love that we are flying under the radar.”

The Friars won’t anymore, not with a schedule the next five weeks featuring Simeon, Brother Rice, Lemont, Hinsdale Central, St. Ignatius and finishing Feb. 14 at two-time defending champ DePaul Prep.

“We play hard, the way that we do. Not many teams play as hard as we do,” Fergerson said. “Football guys, they play with a different edge and a different grit, in football you have to play like that with a different level of physicality. We put a huge premium on defense. We’re giving up about 42 points a game.”

That starts with Marshall, a unique player who can impact a game without scoring.

“Nate, he is a very selfless guy. He doesn’t have to be the guy that scores the points, doesn’t mind making passes to get the other guy a score,” Fergerson said. “A guy that size is not supposed to be able to move like that. He can move like that because he grew up playing basketball. Being able to move like a guard even though he’s a big man is not normal. That is a special type of player.”

Three-sport star leads York

Marshall is not the only football star making an impact on the basketball court this winter.

Football quarterback Luca Carbonaro is the go-to scorer for a Wheaton Warrenville South team that is 8-1 over its last nine games. Northwestern-bound lineman Michael O’Connell and star running back Teyion Oriental are key players in Glenbard West’s rotation.

And then there is Hunter Stepanich.

The 6-foot-7 York junior is a tight end/defensive lineman with three Division I football offers and a Division I volleyball offer.

He’s averaging 11 points and 8 rebounds for York’s basketball team, coming off a 23-point effort in a win Tuesday over Willowbrook.

“I’ve said this to guys – Hunter is the best three-sport athlete I have ever coached," York coach Mike Dunn said. “You are talking about a three-sport athlete that plays at a high level. It’s a testament to the kid. He’s a winner. He’s so humble, so coachable. Any program he’s involved with he makes better.”

Up last year on varsity as a sophomore, Stepanich has made tremendous growth in his skill set on top of what he’s done in football and volleyball.

“It’s a testament to him, he’s an old-school kid,” Dunn said. “You see very few athletes like that.”

Stepanich is one of six players from York’s Class 8A runner-up football team that plays basketball. Another is starting lineman Costa Kampas, a starter in basketball who just got a football offer from Cornell.

No surprise, then, that the Dukes (7-8, 1-2 West Suburban Silver) have been a work in progress. York went 1-3 at the Tosh, but has since won its last two since the calendar flipped to January.

“We’re still finding our way a little bit; we graduated a ton from last year and we’re working some younger kids in,” Dunn said. “Sometimes we struggle to score and we turn the ball over a little bit.

“The one thing is we’re playing a different brand of basketball the last couple years, being guard-dominant. We’re more of a physical football team, playing through our bigs. The more practice we’ve had, we are getting better.”