By RICK SPRUNGER
MONROE — No, that score wasn’t a misprint.
Adams Central snapped a seven-year losing streak against Norwell and beat the Knights for just the second time in 21 years Saturday night by the startling score of 62-30.
“We got kicked,” said Norwell head coach Mike McBride candidly. “We had very little defensive intensity. They were better prepared than we were, and they came out ready to play.”
Did Norwell underestimate an unranked Class 2A team that it had beaten by an average margin of over 23 points per game over the last four years?
“I don’t know why we would have,” countered McBride. “They won 20 games last year and have just about everybody back.”
Norwell had a whole host of problems Saturday night, and they started with 6-7, 210-pound Adams Central senior Isaac Schultz, who scored 24 points on 11-for-15 shooting and grabbed eight rebounds.
“Isaac Schultz was the best player on the floor tonight,” declared McBride. “They could just throw it into him, and we couldn’t stop it. He must have had five, six, seven offensive rebounds.”
He had six of them, actually. And that was despite Schultz picking up two fouls in the game’s first four minutes.
He was never whistled for a third.
“The best thing I ever picked up at the clinics was to play a kid with two (early) fouls,” said Adams Central head coach Aaron McClure of his decision not to pull Schultz out of the game at that point. “If you sit him down for several minutes and he never ends up fouling out, then you haven’t played him as much as you could have. If you play him and he does end up fouling out, at least he was on the court for the maximum time possible.”
Playing the full 32 minutes with white-hot intensity, Adams Central connected on 27 of 41 field goal attempts for a blistering .659 shooting percentage.
Little wonder — of the Jets’ 24 two-point baskets, 20 came from within five feet of the hoop.
“We were able to get out and run in transition,” explained McClure. “We wanted to play fast We took good shots and shot the ball well.”
But Norwell’s problems didn’t end with Adams Central’s inside game. It was also the Knights’ shooting woes.
Norwell hit on a mere 10 of 35 shots from the floor for a paltry .286 field goal percentage.
And the Knights were completely shut out from three-point range, not getting a single one to fall all night.
Three Norwell starters went scoreless.
“We had a lot of opportunities where we didn’t take shots because we were overpassing,” observed McBride.
Then there were the 16 Norwell turnovers and the 26-17 Adams Central rebounding advantage, one that saw the Jets virtually playing volleyball off the offensive glass until their few misses from the field went in.
“You cannot commit 16 turnovers and expect to win,” said McBride, ticking things off on his fingers. “You cannot give up 11 offensive rebounds and expect to win. You cannot go 0-for-12 on three-pointers and expect to win.”
Norwell got off to a bad start, and it got worse from there.
A 9-0 Adams Central run in the first quarter staked the Jets to an early 14-3 lead, and Norwell never got closer than nine points after that.
The last time the Knights were even that close was at 34-25 after a bucket by Cade Shelton with 4:27 left in the third quarter.
After that, Adams Central sped away, outscoring the beleaguered Norwell team, 26-2, for a 60-27 spread with just two minutes remaining.
Adams Central’s big first-quarter run started when Micah McClure splashed a three-pointer to put his team up, 8-3.
Cohen Bailey misfired on a three-pointer, and Schultz took a feed from Trace Maller inside for two more.
Braylend Reber then rebounded an Ashton Federspiel miss and took it coast-to-coast right down Broadway for another deuce.
That drew a timeout from a fired-up McBride.
But after a traveling violation on Norwell, Schultz dropped a 17-footer from the left of the circle for that 14-3 edge.
Norwell really never made much of a run after that.
In fact, there were only three times all night when the Knights managed to score even four points in succession.
“We’re a team that’s going to struggle when we get down early because we don’t have quick firepower,” said McBride later. “We don’t have the transition game or the three-point shooters for that. We need to stay close and give ourselves a chance to win at the end.”
Federspiel scored 12 points and Shelton 11 to pace the Norwell offense, but no one else scored more than two.
Maller joined Schultz in double figures for Adams Central with 13 points.
The win was extremely satisfying for the Jets, who won for just the ninth time in 70 games in the series between the two schools.
Norwell won the junior varsity contest, 50-27.
Brady Smith scored 14 points to lead the Knights while Caiden Petrie and Garry Riley each added seven, Will Case and Ryne Thornton six apiece, Nick McBride five, Aedyn Quintanilla three, and Noah Comer two.
The Knights also took the C-team game, 40-26, with Trey Privett scoring 12 points to lead the freshmen.
sports@news-banner.com
ADAMS CENTRAL 62, NORWELL 30
at Adams Central
NORWELL (6-4): Cade Shelton 4-5 3-4 11, Adam McBride 0-4 0-0 0, Owen Wallis 0-0 0-0 0, Cohen Bailey 0-5 0-0 0, Ashton Federspiel 3-12 6-8 12, Kaedyn Quintanilla 1-3 0-0 2, Brady Smith 1-1 0-0 2, Caiden Petrie 1-2 0-0 2, Garry Riley 0-1 0-0 0, Nick McBride 0-2 0-0 0, Ryne Thornton 0-0 1-2 1, Trace Moser 0-0 0-0 0. TOTAL: 10-35 10-14 30.
ADAMS CENTRAL (5-1): Micah McClure 2-6 2-2 7, Ryan Tester 2-3 0-0 5, Trace Maller 6-9 0-2 13, Braylend Reber 3-4 1-4 7, Isaac Schultz 11-15 2-4 24, Kolton Littler 0-0 0-0 0, Max Hamilton 1-2 0-0 2, Marcus Bollenbacher 0-0 0-0 0, Carter Steele 1-1 0-0 2, Braden Dalrymple 1-1 0-0 2. TOTAL: 27-41 5-12 62.
Norwell 6 11 10 3 — 30
Adams Central 19 11 11 16 — 62
Three-point shooting: Norwell 0-11 (A. McBride 0-3, Bailey 0-3, Quintanilla 0-2, Petrie 0-1, Riley 0-1, N. McBride 0-1), Adams Central 3-5 (McClure 1-1, Tester 1-2, Maller 1-2). Rebounds: Norwell 17 (Federspiel 8), Adams Central 26 (Schultz 8, Reber 6, Maller 5). Turnovers: Norwell 16, Adams Central 9. Personal fouls: Norwell 10, Adams Central 10. Fouled Out: None. Technical fouls: None.
Junior Varsity: Norwell 50, Adams Central 27.
Freshmen: Norwell 40, Adams Central 26.
