First Posted: 3/5/2015
LIMA – It wasn’t perfect anymore. And that was because Ottoville was very good.
Ottoville stunned Crestview 48-47 in a girls basketball Division IV district semifinal at Lima Senior on Thursday night to end the undefeated, state-ranked Knights’ hopes of keeping that perfect season going all the way to the state tournament.
Kalida’s 42-40 win over Leipsic on Jackie Gardner’s game-winning shot in the second game set up an all Putnam County district championship game on Saturday night.
Ottoville (17-7) came out confident from the start against Crestview (23-1) and was never behind in the game.
Nicole Kramer scored 13 points and Annie Lindeman and Alicia Honigford each had 10 points to lead the way. Makenzie Riggenbach led Crestview with 17 points and Emily Bauer had 11 points.
The confidence this could become something special was built on an early volley of three-pointers, when Lindeman and Kramer combined for four of them in the game’s first four minutes to give Ottoville an early 10-point lead.
“That gave us great confidence. In practice we were drilling them, too. So we had confidence coming into the game,” Lindeman said.
“We knew we wanted to get them and we knew it was possible,” she said.
Making three-pointers is nothing new for Ottoville the second half of the season. It hit 14 against McComb and had 11 in another game.
But the five it hit in the first half Thursday night might have been the most important in terms of setting the tone of a game so far, coach Dave Kleman said.
“We really shot the ball well in the first half to give us confidence to be able to play against them. If we hadn’t shot well and they had gotten up early I don’t know what our psyche would have been,” he said. “But once we started making shots and put them behind, that gave us the confidence.”
Crestview erased most of Ottoville’s early 10-point lead to make it 21-18 at halftime and got back to even at 21-21 in the first minute of the third quarter.
But it could never get the lead and Ottoville went up by as many as 11 points, with 3 ½ minutes to play, at 40-29.
Crestview got the lead down to one point at 48-47, on a 3-pointer by Riggenbach in the final seconds. But Ottoville was able to run out the clock for the win.
“It was pretty intense. We just had to keep fighting and pull it through,” Kramer said.
The big win came without starting guard Brooke Mangas in the second half after what Kleman called “flu symptoms” took her out of the game.
Ottoville lost 54-40 to Crestview in the first week of the regular season but this was a different team, Kleman said.
“We grew up a lot. We play a lot of young kids. When we played them the first time we had a lot of young kids who didn’t have a lot of varsity experience. Through the year we’ve gained that. And almost all the teams that beat us are in the tournament yet,” he said.
Kalida 42, Leipsic 40
Gardner’s 15-footer seven seconds left on the clock sent Kalida (20-5) on to its 7 p.m. Saturday match-up with Ottoville for the district championship.
Brittany Kahle scored 14 points and Gardner had 10 points to lead the Wildcats (20-5). Shaylnn Morman, Kierra Meyer and Heather Lammers all scored nine points for Leipsic (19-5).
Kalida jumped out to a 13-2 lead to start the game but Leipsic fought back to tie it 20-20 at halftime.
Kalida went on a 9-0 run to start the second half but Leipsic drew even at 40-40 in the final minute of the game on an offensive rebound for a score by Meyer.
After a timeout, Kalida ran a play, Gardner got open and delivered the game winner.
“We wanted to take the last shot or close enough to the end to give ourselves a chance to get an offensive rebound,” Kalida coach Adam Huber said. “We called a play to run against a man defense and they switched to a zone. So we ran basically the same play against a zone. They guarded it pretty well. Jackie just made a play.
“We’ve got a lot of older girls, juniors and seniors who have been in this atmosphere. They’ve been here, they know how to finish here. And Jackie finished it for us,” he said.
