Lawrence North hoop with 0.00.4 left gets a two-point victory over Norwell
By RICK SPRUNGER
Norwell’s girls’ basketball team lost a tough one Saturday afternoon as the Knights dropped their cross-class intersectional headliner to Class 4A No. 10 Lawrence North, 57-55.
Jamaya Thomas of Lawrence North took a sharp feed under the basket from Kamara Mills on the left baseline and scored the game-winner with 0:00.4 left.
Makenzie Fuess had tied the game for Norwell with a drive through the lane with 0:09 remaining prior to Lawrence North’s winning play.
Norwell coach Eric Thornton didn’t mince words in defeat.
“Our girls really gave us a gutsy effort,” said Thornton, “but we feel like it’s a game we should have won. We gave up some weakside rebounds, and we didn’t take care of the ball.”
The Knights were outrebounded 34-21 by Lawrence North and committed 24 turnovers. “And we were 9-for-18 from the free throw line,” Thornton added.
“We were 9-for-18 tonight and lost by two,” he reiterated, underscoring the stat. “That tells you how important free throws are.”
All of that said, however, Norwell stood in tough against one of Indiana’s elite programs in an ambitious bit of scheduling that few other schools in this area would have dared to attempt.
“Noblesville had invited us down to their tournament, and we would have had almost two full weeks off prior to it,” explained Thornton of the unusual opportunity. “We had an opening, and we wanted to schedule a game in there to prepare for that. But we didn’t want to schedule someone that we knew we were going to beat.”
“I don’t like to lose, but playing that kind of game wasn’t going to prepare us for anything,” he said. “As it turned out, Lawrence North also had an opening, and so we reached out to them.”
His team proved decisively that they were up to that kind of challenge.
The Knights ran out to an early 9-0 lead courtesy of three Norwell three-pointers, two of them by Kennedy Fuelling and one by Vanessa Rosswurm.
They built that margin to 33-20 on back-to-back threes by Fuess late in the second quarter.
And they still held a 35-22 edge on a bucket by Rosswurm 40 seconds into the second half.
But if it was Thomas that scored the winning points for Lawrence North, it was a furious and deadly full-court press employed by the Wildcats that made the winning basket possible.
“It’s kind of a combination of things,” second-year Lawrence North coach Stephen Thomas said about his team’s defense. “It’s basically a man-to-man with some built-in opportunities for some traps.”
That press completely turned the game around in the third quarter and fueled a 20-2 Lawrence North spurt that took the Wildcats from that 35-22 deficit to a 42-37 lead with 47 seconds left in the period.
During that span, Norwell missed nine straight field goal attempts and two free throws while committing seven turnovers.
Meanwhile, Lawrence North went to work. While the Wildcats committed seven turnovers themselves in the quarter, they also hit nine of 15 field goal attempts and battered the Knights 12-6 on the boards.
A three-pointer by Victoria Guyse tied the game at 35-35, and she followed a Norwell turnover with a drive down the lane to give the Wildcats their first lead of the game at 37-35 with 2:41 left in the period.
Fuess canned two free throws to retie the game. Then Naja Winston, a 5-10 sophomore who scored 19 points for Lawrence North, got a rebound basket, then a steal, layup, and three-point play to put the Wildcats in charge at 42-37.
“They are strong and athletic and aggressive, and that kind of pressure can just wear you down,” said Thornton. “It’s tough to get it back, but we were able to.”
Annabelle Johnson broke Norwell’s drought from the field with a five-footer in the lane that cut the gap to 42-39 at the break, and a 7-2 surge to start the fourth quarter regained the lead for the Knights at 46-44 on two Fuess free throws with 5:18 remaining.
Lawrence North immediately tied it, but Lilly Norris stepped up with a three-pointer from the right corner and a 49-46 Norwell advantage.
With the score 51-48, lightning struck from an unexpected source for Lawrence North. Emani Washington, the last player off the Wildcat bench, hit her only shot of the game, a three-pointer from the right corner that tied the score with 2:10 left.
Fuelling drove the lane to put Norwell back up 53-51, but back-to-back buckets by Kya Hurt flipped the scoreboard to a 55-53 Lawrence North lead at 0:34.
Fuess then tied the game to set up Thomas’s game-winner.
If Lawrence North’s press was bothersome for Norwell, Norwell’s defense was equally troublesome for the visitors.
“That 1-3-1 gave us trouble all day,” said Thomas of a defense that caused a whopping 29 Lawrence North turnovers. “They are lengthy and long, and their guards are deceptively quick at getting into the passing lanes. It was causing us to be careless about leaving our feet and making bad passes.”
The Lawrence North mentor added a prediction as he praised the Knights.
“That is a really, really, really good team over there,” said Thomas, gesturing toward the Norwell locker room. “I fully expect them to win their state championship.”
Fuess led all scorers with 20 points for Norwell, and Fuelling chipped in with 13.
The Knights were 20-for-44 from the field for a .455 shooting percentage.
Hurt joined Winston in double figures with 14 points for Lawrence North, which was 26-for-51 for .510 while only shooting two free throws all day.
“It’s disappointing,” said Thornton, “but I told our girls the same thing I told them after the Columbia City game: ‘Don’t hang on to this; but don’t forget it, either. We need to learn from it.”
Norwell won the junior varsity contest, 55-42.
Macie Saalfrank scored 18 points, Jada Dale 14, and Ashley Waldman 12 for Norwell. Larkin Smith added five points, Haley Williamson four, and Savanna Simerman two.
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LAWRENCE NORTH 57, NORWELL 55
LAWRENCE NORTH (11-3): Kya Hurt 7-14 0-0 14, Kamara Mills 0-5 0-0 0, Naja Winston 8-11 2-2 19, Keke Butler 2-6 0-0 4, Jamaya Thomas 3-3 0-0 6, Ellysa Morris 0-0 0-0 0, Victoria Guyse 3-6 0-0 7, Ka’Nyriah Ridley 0-2 0-0 0, Natalia Franklin 2-3 0-0 4, Ashiyah Teague 0-0 0-0 0, Emani Washington 1-1 0-0 3. TOTAL: 26-51 2-2 57.
NORWELL (11-3): Annabelle Johnson 1-2 0-2 2, Kennedy Fuelling 4-13 3-8 13, Makenzie Fuess 6-11 6-6 20, Vanessa Rosswurm 4-10 0-0 9, Dekota Hubble 3-5 0-0 6, Haley Green 0-0 0-0 0, Lillian Norris 2-3 0-0 5, Addison Norris 0-0 0-2 0. TOTAL: 20-44 9-18 55.
Lawrence North 14 8 20 15 — 57
Norwell 17 16 6 16 —- 55
Three-point shooting: Lawrence North 3-14 (Hurt 0-2, Mills 0-2, Winston 1-1, Butler 0-4, Guyse 1-2, Ridley 0-2, Washington 1-1), Norwell 6-10 (Fuelling 2-2, Fuess 2-3, Rosswurm 1-4, L. Norris 1-1). Rebounds: Lawrence North 34 (Winston 8, Hurt 7), Norwell 21. Turnovers: Lawrence North 29, Norwell 24. Personal fouls: Lawrence North 17, Norwell 8. Fouled Out: Butler. Technical fouls: None.
Junior Varsity: Norwell 55, Lawrence North 42.
