Down 14, Wolverines rally for road win at Fremont-Mills
TABOR - With his team trailing 30-19 at the half to Fremont-Mills, East Mills coach Blair Holman decided he needed to challenge his team at halftime.
“There’s some groups you can challenge and others you have to tip-toe around,” said Holman of his halftime pep talk. “I don’t have to tip-toe around anything with this team. We knew we didn’t play up to our caliber. They hit a crazy amount of threes, I don’t know how many, but I challenged them to step up like competitors do and they did. Our defensive intensity was the difference.”
The Wolverines did indeed rise to their coach’s challenge, out-scoring the Knights 32-15 after halftime in a 51-45, come-from-behind victory in Tabor Thursday night.
The win snapped a 20-game losing skid to the Knights, dating back to 2010.
“It’s kind of been a mind game with this team the last three or four years so it’s nice get over that hump,” Holman said. “It kind of looked like it was going to be the same thing all over again, but we got over the hump and proved to ourselves we can beat this team.”
The first half had all the makings of a rather typical Knight win as they opened the quarter on a 16-4 run that had them ahead 27-12 with just under three minutes to go in the half. The Wolverines outscored the Knights 7-3 to close the half but trailed by 11 at intermission.
In the second half, the Wolverines came out aggressive, scoring 11 of the first 14 points and cutting the lead to 33-30 on Alex Knop’s free throw.
The East Mills defense held F-M scoreless for nearly five minutes in the frame and the Knights finally ended the drought on a Kaelynn Driskell’s three-pointer with 2:31 to go to stretch the lead back to 36-30.
But the Wolverines would respond by scoring the final six points of the quarter to make it a whole new ballgame heading into the fourth.
The teams would trade baskets – and turnovers – through the final frame before back-to-back layups by Knop put the Wolverines in front 45-41.
The Knights would never get closer than three points the rest of the way as the Wolverines hit 3-of-6 free throws the stretch to ice the victory.
The Wolverines shot 36 free throws, making 20 in the game. Holman said his team’s ability to get to the line wasn’t so much a more aggressive approach in attacking the basket as it was a slight change up in the offensive scheme that saw Knop shift into the baseline with Emily Williams in the high post.
“Emily is very tough to guard and she makes good decisions at the high post. Once we got the ball on the wing, they were extending their defense and we did good job attacking the gaps.”
Fremont-Mills coach Brett Weldon said he felt like his team had a tough time answering the Wolverines’ defensive intensity in the second half and it cost them in a game they led by as many as 15.
“Defensively, they got after us,” Weldon said. They played man-to-man which I kind of knew they’d do, and we tried to negate that early with some stuff that kind of worked but in the second half our decision making wasn’t the best and they took advantage. And we put them on the free throw line too much and they made their free throws.”
The Knights were 6-of-17 at the line in the game, including just 1-of-8 in the second half.
“That’s tough in a close game,” he said. “We talked about that. That’s easy points for any team and it gives them way too many opportunities to score easy baskets. Give them credit, they took advantage and they were prepared and ready.”
Knop led East Mills with 16 points while Williams chipped in 14.
Driskell scored 22 points to lead Fremont-Mills.
Fremont-Mills 57,
Essex 29
Teagan Ewalt scored 16 points and Kenna Howard had 10 to lead Fremont-Mills to a 57-29 victory over Essex in Corner Conference girls basketball last Tuesday in Essex.
The Knights (6-4 overall, 5-1 in the conference) led 11-6 after a quarter and extended their lead with an 18-8 second quarter run.