NorthWood Basketball: Panthers Dig In, Drop Wawasee
LIGONIER – In a defensive battle, NorthWood manufactured enough offense to muster out a hard-fought 40-29 win over Wawasee in the first night of the West Noble Girls Basketball Sectional.
The Panthers held Wawasee without a basket for the first 7:32, spreading out a 12-2 lead after a quarter, and kept the Warriors off the board for another 4:24 to start the second quarter. A three from the corner by Nicole Flickinger gave NorthWood a 19-10 lead, which became a 12-point bulge at the break.
Flickinger’s nine points at the half and 11 overall helped set the tone of just what NorthWood needed.
“Nicole is the glue, the smartest player I have ever coached,” said NorthWood head coach Adam Yoder. “It’s not even close. She has so many things running through her mind. She finds a way to execute them. So happy for her scoring tonight.”
The Panthers opened up a 17-point lead in the third quarter, only for Wawasee to go on a 7-0 run as the fourth quarter materialized.
But a trio of key plays from Savannah Feenstra helped fend off Wawasee’s desperate rally. Feenstra hit a shot to put Wood back up 12, then hauled in a rebound on Wawasee’s next possession and took a pass from Flickinger and buried the shot, putting Wood up 14 at 35-21 and out of reach.
“It’s just move onto the next play,” Yoder said. “I thought we did a nice job of that in the second half. It was too close. It never got under 10, I don’t think, but it was too close. I’m just glad that game is over, and it’s now onto Tippy Valley. That’s the next step if we want to win the sectional. I care about being happy for the next half hour until we get home, then we gotta watch some tape on some big Valley girls. They are something else, really good. There’s no question they are the favorite.”
Wawasee’s struggles on the offensive end, which had the team make just three baskets in the first half, spoiled what was a solid defensive effort. Giving up just 40.5 points per game this season which was right on the mark Tuesday, the Lady Warriors also held NorthWood scoreless for the first 4:30 of the third quarter until Taitlyn Trenshaw buried a three, which seemed to open the scoring flow a bit.
Tuesday, however, just wasn’t Wawasee’s night, per head coach Matt Carpenter.
“You have to give credit to NorthWood, they came out and were able to rattle us a little bit and played a tempo that was their style and not quite our style,” stated Carpenter. “We just couldn’t get into a flow offensively, and that led to missed shots. And a lot of missed shots makes defensive transition to get back difficult against a team that likes to push the ball like they did. Not the start we wanted by any means, and give credit to NorthWood. My girls were prepared. We didn’t come out and execute like we wanted to and it came back to haunt us in the end.”
Feenstra and Maddy Payne each finished with eight points, Payne coming up big in the post for NorthWood when Wawasee spread out to account for Trenshaw and Flickinger.
Hannah-Marie Lamle led Wawasee (10-13) with 10 points and Hannah Haines capped her career with eight points. Aubrey Kuhn and Aubrey Schmeltz each ended with four points.
NorthWood (16-9) will move to Friday’s second semi-final to take on defending sectional champion Tippecanoe Valley (20-4). The first game of the night will involve a rematch of last week’s regular season finale between Fairfield (12-9) and West Noble (17-8).
The Chargers, which beat Fairfield 59-42 on Jan. 27, knocked out Lakeland 63-51 in Tuesday’s first game. Lakeland trailed just 35-29 in the second half, but a 13-0 run by the Chargers, fueled by two three-pointers by Angela Gross and a bomb from Megan Godfrey, put the Chargers out of reach.
Lakeland closes at 6-17 overall, three of its final four losses were to West Noble, and all of those were in Ligonier.
West Noble was paced by Kaylie Warble’s 19 points and 10 from Gross. The Chargers hit nine threes overall in the game. Lakeland had Jaden Conrad lead all scorers with 22 points. Rebeka Stroop was right behind with 20 points.