By RICK SPRUNGER
COLUMBIA CITY — Norwell’s Lady Knights were the best team in the state of Indiana Friday night.
For one night, anyway.
They must have been; they knocked off the consensus No. 1 team in the state, previously unbeaten Columbia City, 45-44.
They even did it on Columbia City’s own floor.
Two free throws by Dekota Hubble with 0:09 left lifted Norwell over the top, and Addison Baxter missed a shot from the lane under heavy pressure to secure it.
The win was a huge step toward a Northeast 8 Conference championship for Norwell, now 9-2 on the season.
But it was hardly a conference clincher.
It was only the second game in the league for both clubs, and Bellmont still has dates with both.
The sequence that set up the winning points started when Kennedy Fuelling knifed through the lane for a layup that got the Knights to within 44-43.
A vicious defensive stand for Norwell ended with a Columbia City pass on the baseline going through the legs of its intended receiver and out of bounds with 0:30 remaining.
Norwell used its final timeout with 0:23 left and started working the ball around the perimeter until Makenzie Fuess found a wide-open Hubble under the basket with a bullet pass.
Columbia City’s Addiston Baxter hammered Hubble from behind to make sure she earned the points at the stripe.
She did, scoring her only two points of the game but perhaps two of Norwell’s biggest of the season.
But the Knights still had to make one defensive play.
Columbia City raced to midcourt and burned its final timeout with 0:06 left.
But the Eagles had a huge problem. Norwell still had two fouls to give.
“And we wanted to use both of them,” said Norwell coach Eric Thornton about what went on in that final huddle. “We knew they would go to Baxter, and we didn’t want her to turn the corner (at the elbow). We wanted to foul her on her second dribble. Vanessa (Rosswurm) got her the first time (with 0:03.8 to play) but missed her the second time. Baxter slipped by her, and all you can do is hold your breath.”
Columbia City’s all-state candidate, and Butler commit got off a 10-footer from the right side of the lane in heavy traffic but missed it, and there was no time for a follow.
“Wide left,” smiled Thornton later. “All our players had their arms up, and she didn’t have much time to work with.”
Baxter, a 5-9 junior, and Molly Baker, a 5-10 senior, were a load inside for Norwell all night.
Baker totaled 15 points and Baxter 13 points and 11 rebounds for the Eagles, and the two of them keyed a 15-2 second-half run that flipped a 26-20 Norwell advantage with 4:32 left in the third quarter to a 35-28 Columbia City edge at the 7:09 mark of the fourth.
It was still 40-34 after Columbia City’s Laney Ziliak spotted up from the right corner and hit her only shot of the game, a three-pointer with 4:01 left that got the Columbia City crowd smelling it.
“I was so proud of our team for how we fought back in the fourth quarter,” said Thornton “It would have been really easy to let it go at that point, and we didn’t do that.”
A Fuess drive down the lane and a pair of Rosswurm free throws wrapped around a Columbia City turnover got Norwell back in it at 40-38.
Kyndra Sheets answered for Columbia City from in front of the basket, but Fuelling drilled a three-pointer to inch the Knights within 42-41 at 1:41.
Baker got a bucket underneath 15 seconds later, and that set up the final minute of play that has already been described.
Norwell controlled the game for much of the first three quarters.
A 10-0 run fueled by Fuess gave the Knights an early 13-5 lead.
Her drive through the lane and back-to-back three-pointers put her team in the driver’s seat early.
Columbia City fought back in the second quarter, but a Rosswurm three gave Norwell a 22-19 halftime advantage.
Fuess opened the third quarter with a pair of free throws and then took a rebound coast-to-coast for the 26-20 lead that Columbia City spent the next five minutes erasing.
There was plenty of credit to spread around for Norwell, starting, of course, with Hubble’s free throws at the end.
Rosswurm “was relentless on the boards,” according to Thornton. “She had nine rebounds. She goes and gets the ball, and she got a lot of those 50-50 balls for us tonight.”
Then there was Fuess, whose back-to-back threes in the first quarter, her game-high 18 points, and her find of Hubble on the last play were huge.
And Fuelling scored nine of her 14 points in the fourth quarter, including the three-pointer that got Norwell within one point and her drive through the lane that set up Hubble’s free throws.
Neither team shot particularly well.
Norwell was 16-for-51 from the field for a chilly .314 shooting percentage.
Columbia City was an even-worse 18-for-60 for .300.
But Thornton credited those shooting percentages to two first-rate defenses.
“These were two good teams getting after it,” Thornton said. “It’s hard to score.”
But it may have been a defensive change that assisted Norwell’s fourth quarter comeback.
“We were trying to force the ball to the outside with our 1-3-1,” said Thornton with almost an air of exasperation. “But they were getting it inside. That has got to be one of the best passing teams I have seen. They forced us to switch to a man-to-man.”
Norwell will return to action Tuesday night when it plays host to Woodlan and on Saturday when it travels to DeKalb for a conference matchup.
Norwell also won the junior varsity game, 60-17.
Macie Saalfrank and Ashley Waldman both scored 17 points as each matched Columbia City’s total output.
Larkin Smith added 10 points, Haley Williamson seven, Jada Dale four, Makayla Young three, and Brooklyn Meyer two.
