LIGONIER - The ninth-ranked NorthWood Lady Panthers basketball team never really gave Wawasee a chance Friday at West Noble High School.
Playing in the first round of Class 3A Sectional 21, NorthWood (18-3) defeated its Northern Lakes Conference opponent 47-33, advancing to tonight's semifinal against Columbia City.Despite defeating Wawasee 54-30 at home on Jan. 9, NorthWood coach Steve Neff's been in the game long enough to know the postseason can be a whole other beast. Unfortunately for Wawasee (11-10), the sectional game went much like the regular-season contest.
"They'd won quite a few games toward the end of the season, playing better," Neff said about Wawasee, which had won four of its last six. "You just never know in a sectional."
To make sure there would be no upset, NorthWood got started fast, grabbing a 13-4 lead at the end of the first quarter.
In order to establish that lead, NorthWood did a good job of moving the ball around, attacking the Wawasee zone and really having no trouble with it.
Routinely, the Panthers were able to get the ball into the middle of the zone, affording themselves easy shots, many coming from senior Lindsey Steffen, who scored 18 points on 7-of-9 shooting.
"That's the way we've tried to attack them the last two years," Neff said. "The only way you can really get anything is on the baseline or in the middle of the zone. We moved the ball real well there for a stretch, which helped us build the lead."
And Wawasee coach Kem Zolman could only watch as his defense was cut up.
"We aren't very quick from Point A to Point B," Zolman said. "They had very good ball movement. They were able to hit open people quite often."
On top of beating the Wawasee zone, NorthWood also dominated on the boards, outrebounding the Lady Warriors 34-19.
"Our main emphasis was on not shooting ourselves in the foot with unforced turnovers and rebounding," Zolman said. "I thought we did a better job with the unforced turnovers, but we didn't rebound worth a hoot."
On top of not rebounding, Wawasee also had just two assists and one steal.
A bright spot for Wawasee was freshman KiLee Knafel, who scored 12 points and grabbed four rebounds, but it wasn't nearly enough against an experienced Panthers team.
Following the game, Zolman didn't seem as upset with the loss as he was with the preparation that his girls entered the season with.
"To be a player in this game, you have to work at it," he said. "You just have to flat out work at it. Some are going to be pretty good shooters because they're going to work harder than most. That's why you don't see a lot of great shooters in the area. It's because that takes a lot of work. But then you just have to have people come in to work on ball handling and passing, just that kind of stuff that anyone can do. It's the first time in my 28-year career that we didn't have that."
And after going 43-7 during the previous two seasons, this year's 11-10 team learned a valuable lesson.
"They experienced you get what you put in," Zolman said. "That was the epitome of our year.
"You've got to be able to get out of something, what you put into it," he added. "I don't really believe we put in that much. As long as I'm going to be coach here, that's not going to happen again."
