By RICK SPRUNGER
“You busy Saturday? I hear there’s something going on in New Castle.”
The words belonged to a smiling Norwell coach Mike McBride and were said to probably no more than a dozen different people as he flitted happily about through a delirious mop on the playing floor at Norwell Saturday night.
McBride’s Knights had just held off Oak Hill, 62-61, in one whale of a basketball game to win its second sectional championship in three years.
Norwell, now 22-4 on the season and ranked No. 7 in Class 3A, will face No. 8 Leo 19-5 and a 62-55 winner over the Knights on Jan. 8, in the second semifinal game at about noon next Saturday at the New Castle regional.
Third-ranked NorthWood (24-2) and Yorktown (10-14) – the unlikely winner of the New Castle sectional – will battle in the 10 a.m. opener.
Winners will meet at night for the title.
Jake Parker hit the biggest free throw of his life with four seconds left to give Norwell a 62-58 lead and render Landon Biegel’s 3-pointer from the volleyball line meaningless.
There were heroes and thrills aplenty in this one.
In a game that saw 10 ties and 21 lead changes, Norwell used a 10-0 run in the game’s final four minutes to shake loose of the pesky Golden Eagles.
Luke McBride and Luke Graft had huge games for Norwell.
McBride scored 25 points, grabbed 10 rebounds, and dished out eight assists.
Graft scored 22 points on 8-for-8 shooting from the field and 6-for-8 free throws while hauling in five rebounds.
McBride, who scored Norwell’s last 12 points prior to Parker’s free throw, nailed a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 3:13 remaining to give Norwell the lead for good at 53-52 and then hit eight free throws down the stretch.
His freebie with 20 seconds to play gave Norwell a 59-52 lead and seemed to clinch it.
Oak Hill, meanwhile, had been shooting blanks, missing five straight 3-point shots, four of them by Biegel, who led all scorers with 30 points.
But Oak Hill was not going away that fast.
Matthew Strange finally hit a three for the Golden Eagles with 13 seconds remaining and fouled McBride a second later.
McBride hit both to make it 61-55 and leave Oak Hill in need of a miracle.
It nearly got it.
A three by Caleb Kroll with six seconds left narrowed the gap to 61-58.
And then things got dicey.
Norwell couldn’t inbound the ball against Oak Hill’s frantic pressure, and the Knights were initially called for a five-second violation.
But that call was waved off by an official who ran in from center court to announce that Norwell had called timeout first.
That sent the Oak Hill bench into hysterics, but the call stood.
“I had it,” said the elder McBride calmly of the timeout. “The official was standing right in front of me and knew that I would be calling it if I needed to.”
But that left Norwell with no timeouts, and the Knights once again were unable to get the ball in.
That is, until Parker finally broke free from his man and Graft got the ball out of his hands just as the official was beginning the downward arc of his arm for the fifth time.
“That was a good job by Graft to get it in and be aware that we didn’t have a timeout left and a great job by Parker to get himself open.”
That wasn’t all McBride had to say about Graft.
“Luke Graft has really been playing well as of late,” said his coach. “They were extending their matchup zone to pick up our outside shooters, and that allowed Graft to get under the basket.”
Which is where he got all eight of his field goals.
He was the recipient of seven of McBride’s eight assists, and he also put back two of McBride’s misses.
McBride himself really came on strong in the second half after picking up two quick fouls nine seconds apart in the game’s first 1:18 that put a ball and chain around his ankle.
“A similar thing happened to him in the Leo game,” said his proud papa later. “What that does is takes away his aggressiveness on both sides of the ball.
“In the Leo game, we left him in there and let him have a chance to work things out.
“We did that tonight, too, because we’d done it before.”
In fact, McBride played the whole game except for the final 1:01 of the first quarter and never did pick up that third foul until midway through the fourth when it hardly mattered.
“Graft and McBride just deserve a ton of credit for the way they played,” said their coach.
But it wasn’t just those two.
Parker only scored 3 points, but that last free throw sent his team to New Castle next week.
And Lleyton Bailey added a three-point play on a drive down the lane to start the fourth quarter to earn a 45-45 tie.
And that was key in a game in which no one led by more than 3 points until the final minute except for one brief 15-second stretch in the third quarter when Norwell was on top, 38-33.
And two quick threes by Biegel took care of that in a hurry.
Although Norwell was uncharacteristically quiet (3-for-8) from behind the arc, it nonetheless finished with 19-for-36 shooting from the floor for a solid 52.8 shooting percentage.
Biegel was as good as advertised for Oak Hill.
He averages 22 and scored 30 although he missed those four threes late in the game, two of them badly short and one an airball.
“I would like to think that we wore him down a little,” commented McBride.
As a team, Oak Hill was 20-for-42 from the field for 47.6 percent.
sports@news-banner.com
NORWELL 62, OAK HILL 61
At Norwell High School
NORWELL (22-4): Lleyton Bailey 2-5 1-1 6, Luke McBride 6-16 11-14 25, Jake Parker 1-5 1-2 3, Luke Graft 8-8 6-8 22, Brody Bolyn 1-1 0-0 2, Ashton Federspiel 1-1 2-2 4, Cohen Bailey 0-0 0-0 0, Jon Colbert 0-0 0-0 0. TOTAL: 19-36 21-27 62.
OAK HILL (18-6): Caleb Kroll 6-12 4-5 18, Matthew Strange 1-4 2-3 5, Landon Biegel 9-21 6-6 30, Grant Elzinga 0-0 0-0 0, Kyle Turanchick 0-0 0-1 0, Levi Trexler 1-2 0-1 2, Ty Fagan 3-3 0-0 6. TOTAL: 20-42 12-16 61.
Norwell 15 14 13 20 –– 62
Oak Hill 12 18 14 17 –– 61
Three-point Goals: Norwell 3-8 (L. Bailey 1-3, McBride 2-3, Parker 0-2), Oak Hill 9-23 (Kroll 2-4, Strange 1-4, Biegel 6-15). Rebounds: Norwell 25 (McBride 10, Bolyn 6, Graft 5), Oak Hill 21 (Fagan 5). Turnovers: Norwell 6, Oak Hill 6. Personal fouls: Norwell 16, Oak Hill 20. Fouled Out: None. Technicals: None.
