By RICK SPRUNGER
GAS CITY – Norwell’s girls are out.
That bit of news Saturday night hit Knight Nation like a sledgehammer.
The same Bellmont team that Norwell had destroyed by 33 points just three weeks earlier came to Mississinewa and knocked the legs of the two-time defending sectional champion, fifth-ranked, and heavily favored Knights out from under them by a 44-33 score to earn a place in Tuesday night’s sectional championship game against Heritage.
To add insult to injury, not only was Bellmont playing without its leading scorer, Kenzie Fuelling, who had suffered a knee injury just prior to the first game between the two rivals; it was also playing without Fuelling’s replacement in the starting lineup, Ellen Scott, who suffered a season-ending injury to her hand a week before this one.
Offense was the culprit.
In the one game in which it could not afford to go into a team-wide offensive slump, Norwell went stone-cold silent, particularly in the second half.
Between the 6:55 mark of the third quarter and the 1:41 mark of the fourth – a stretch of 13:14 – Norwell was 1-for-14 from the field, 1-for-3 from the stripe, committed six turnovers, and scored just 3 points.
“Our defense played well enough to win,” said Norwell coach Eric Thornton after watching his team held 22 points below its offensive average. “But we could never get the momentum in the second half, even when we got multiple stops.
“I felt like if we could have just gotten two scores in a row, it would have boosted our confidence.
“But we lost confidence the more we missed; and so there was a little doubt, a little panic, and we lost our composure at times.”
Three straight drives to the basket by Sydney Keane in the third quarter, the latter after a Rachel Bleke steal, flipped the scoreboard from a 26-23 Norwell lead to a 29-26 Bellmont advantage.
After another Norwell turnover, a pull-up jumper by Macey Spiegel from the baseline gave the Braves a 5-point edge.
Makenzie Fuess finally broke the drought for Norwell with a jumper from the left elbow with 1:59 left in the third quarter, and Kennedy Fuelling followed with one of two free throws.
But two more turnovers in the final minute of the period, one on a wild pass that sailed out of bounds, kept the score at 31-29 heading into the fourth frame.
That was an extremely manageable deficit, particularly when Bellmont was only able to scratch out two free throws in the first four and a half minutes of the period.
But Norwell missed its first 10 shots of the fourth quarter while Bellmont inched the margin out to 36-29.
Mackinzie Toliver finally forced a Bellmont turnover in the backcourt and fed the ball from the seat of her pants to Emily Todd, whose uncontested layup brought the score back to 36-31 with 1:41 left.
Two free throws by Bellmont’s Arabelle Laurent were matched by a Skyla Tomasek bucket underneath to keep the margin at 5 with 52 seconds remaining.
But Laurent hit the first of two free throws with 46 ticks left.
And when Hailey Cole rebounded Laurent’s miss on the second shot and put it back in for a 41-33 score, Norwell was finished.
Norwell hit a total of just four of 20 shots in the second half for a meager 20 percent shooting and was just 13-for-43 for a sub-freezing 30.2 percent for the game.
It wasn’t much better in the first half.
Outside of Fuelling, who rifled three 3-pointers in the first quarter and another in the second, Norwell had a hard time putting the ball in the basket.
“We were getting good looks, and our ball movement was good enough; we just weren’t knocking down the shots,” sighed Thornton.
But there was a place in the first half where Thornton thought his team missed a golden opportunity.
After a 6-point Norwell spurt at the start of the second quarter had given the Knights a 17-12 lead, Fuelling answered a Laurent 3-pointer with her fourth triple of the game to make it 20-15.
And the Knights got the ball right back not once but twice, first on a turnover and then on a miss, with an opportunity to widen the gap and put Bellmont on the defensive.
But two missed shots from the lane, and a Rachel Bleke rebound putback on the other end got Bellmont back in it, and the Braves were able to claw their way back to within 24-23 at halftime.
Fuelling led Norwell with 13 points, 12 in the first half on those four 3-pointers.
Fuess added 9 points off the bench, 7 in the first half.
But Bellmont limited those two to just three shots apiece in the second half.
Keane led all scorers with 14 points for Bellmont while Cole added 13 and Laurent 9 off the bench, 6 of hers coming on her first two 3-pointers of the season in the first half.
Cole snared 11 rebounds to lead Bellmont to a whopping 35-21 edge in that category.
Norwell finishes its season with a 19-5 record.
sports@news-banner.com
BELLMONT 44, NORWELL 33
At Mississinewa High School
BELLMONT (16-8): Sydney Keane 4-9 6-8 14, Emily Bleke 1-6 0-0 2, Macey Spiegel 1-5 0-0 2, Rachel Bleke 2-5 0-0 4, Hailey Cole 5-9 3-4 13, Arabelle Laurent 2-4 3-4 9, Tessa Spiegel 0-1 0-0 0. TOTAL: 15-39 12-16 44.
NORWELL (19-5): Emily Todd 1-5 0-0 2, Kennedy Fuelling 4-11 1-2 13, Mackinzie Toliver 0-5 1-2 1, Annabelle Johnson 2-4 0-0 4, Skyla Tomasek 2-9 0-0 4, Makenzie Fuess 4-9 0-1 9, Haley Green 0-0 0-0 0, Ali Riley 0-0 0-0 0. TOTAL: 13-43 2-5 33.
Bellmont 12 11 8 13 –– 44
Norwell 11 13 5 4 –– 33
Three-point Goals: Bellmont 2-8 (Keane 0-1, M. Spiegel 0-1, Cole 0-2, Laurent 2-3, T. Spiegel 0-1), Norwell 5-19 (Todd 0-4, Fuelling 4-8, Toliver 0-4, Fuess 1-3). Rebounds: Bellmont 35 (Cole 11, E. Bleke 7), Norwell 21 (Tomasek 7). Turnovers: Bellmont 13, Norwell 10. Fouls: Bellmont 9, Norwell 13. Fouled Out: None. Technicals: None.
