By RICK SPRUNGER
If someone would have told Norwell coach Eric Thornton that his team would score just 40 points on shockingly sickly .224 shooting (15-67) against a good 8-3 DeKalb team Saturday night, “I would have counted it as a loss,” Thornton admitted frankly.
Fortunately for Norwell, the defense was up to the occasion and played well enough to allow the Knights to escape with a win by 18 points.
Playing with perhaps the most vicious defensive intensity they have shown all season, Norwell forced 25 turnovers, smashed the startled Barons on the boards, 48-32, limited them to .250 (9-36) shooting themselves, and coasted to a surprisingly easy 40-22 victory.
Norwell improved to 9-4 on the season and to 2-1 in the Northeast 8 Conference.
“We were coming off the Woodlan game Tuesday night and what I thought was a very uninspiring defensive performance,” explained Thornton of his team’s intensity on the other end. “Let’s just say they wore their track shoes to practice on Wednesday, and we focused on defense,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
They got the message.
“We talked about energy,” he continued. “Tuesday night, we didn’t have it; tonight, we had it.”
Seemingly every time an increasingly wide-eyed DeKalb player caught a pass, she was immediately hit with a double-team and a tangled thicket of arms and legs.
Every pass was contested; every shot was hurried and harassed.
So strong was Norwell’s defensive performance that DeKalb actually had more turnovers (25) than points (22).
The night was typified by what Thornton called “the defensive play of the game” with 3:02 left in the contest and Norwell already leading by 16 points. DeKalb, inbounding into the backcourt from the side, threw the ball into the corner. Vanessa Rosswurm leaped high in the air to tip the ball away from its intended receiver out of bounds.
But before it could land, and falling out of bounds herself with no one to get it to, Rosswurm had the presence of mind to tip it right back off the leg of the DeKalb player out of bounds.
Norwell ball.
“You remember, he (DeKalb coach Noah Stuckey) called an immediate timeout,” said Thornton. “That is just so deflating, you can’t let something like that go without trying to get them settled down.”
Not that it mattered.
DeKalb, which only scored two points in the game’s last 10:34, never scored again.
But Norwell was a Jekyll-and-Hyde team Saturday night.
As good as it was on defense, on offense it couldn’t throw the ball into the ocean from a boat.
The Knights hit on just one of their first 11 shots and two of their first 15. Jada Dale got both field goals, one on a rebound putback of her own missed three, the other on a steal and runout layup.
They missed their first nine shots in the second quarter — and their first 10 in the fourth.
The final numbers were 15-67 for a woeful .224 shooting percentage and an extremely uncharacteristic 3-33 (.091) from behind the arc.
“But we took 31 more shots than they did,” pointed out Thornton. “That was because of all the second and third (and fourth) shots we were getting.”
On one sequence in the fourth quarter, Norwell got five shots and two free throws in the same possession — and came away with no points.
“I think maybe we were a little out of sorts, playing without Ashley (Waldman, who missed the game with an injury),” said Thornton. “But I was proud of our toughness. It’s really easy to drop your head when you’re not hitting your shots. But I think tonight we proved that there’s more than one way to win a game. And I’m hoping that this will give us the confidence down the road to know that even if we aren’t shooting well, we can still get after it on defense.”
Macie Saalfrank led Norwell in scoring with 15 points.
Rosswurm added 11 points and 15 rebounds and Dale 10 points and 12 rebounds.
Norwell also won the junior varsity contest, 72-21. Joycelynn Hogsett-Turner scored 24 points for the Knights, and Chloe Comer and Carlee Strunk joined her in double figures with 13 and 10 points, respectively.
Daisy Swineford added eight points, Haley Williamson (7), Eden Nash five, Brielle Foss (3), and Elizabeth Dillion (2).
sports@news-banner.com
NORWELL 40, DEKALB 22
At Norwell
DEKALB (8-4, 1-2 NE8): Bree Fordyce 1-3 1-2 3, Reese Schmidt 2-7 0-0 5, Ashley Cox 3-11 0-0 6, Abbie Harris 2-7 0-0 5, Grace Pfister 1-8 0-0 3, Kyla Kjendalen 0-0 0-0 0, Ellington Sparkman 0-0 0-0 0. TOTAL: 9-36 1-2 22.
NORWELL (9-4, 2-1 NE8): Addie Norris 0-7 0-0 0, Alivia Green 0-4 0-2 0, Macie Saalfrank 6-21 2-2 15, Vanessa Rosswurm 3-11 5-7 11, Jada Dale 4-15 0-0 10, Ryland Graft 1-3 0-0 2, Isabella Swineford 1-2 0-0 2, Haley Williamson 0-3 0-0 0, Larkin Smith 0-1 0-0 0. TOTAL: 15-67 7-11 40.
DeKalb 10 3 7 2 — 22
Norwell 9 9 13 9 — 40
Three-point shooting: DeKalb 3-19 (Schmidt 1-2, Cox 0-4, Harris 1-6, Pfister 1-7), Norwell 3-33 (Norris 0-6, Saalfrank 1-13, Rosswurm 0-3, Dale 2-8, Graft 0-2, Williamson 0-1). Rebounds: DeKalb 32 Fordyce 9, Pfister 6, Cox 5), Norwell 48 (Rosswurm 15, Dale 12, Green 6). Turnovers: DeKalb 25, Norwell 12. Personal fouls: DeKalb 10, Norwell 11. Fouled Out: None. Technical fouls: None.
Junior Varsity: Norwell 72, DeKalb 21.
