OSSIAN – Maybe Kaylee Fuelling was mad at herself. Or maybe she was just dialed in on the moment.
She got a clean look at the rim at the end of regulation on Saturday night against Garrett and the ball just didn’t cooperate. It rolled off the rim and sent host Norwell into overtime against the fellow unbeaten Railroaders. Perhaps fate intervened; it was a growing moment for Fuelling. And as much as she wanted that one to fall, she probably would be happy with what happened next more days than not.
Fuelling went on to score all 11 of Norwell’s points in the overtime session as the Knights won 60-54. Out of anger or enthusiasm, it is the kind of scoring run high school basketball players dream of; all of those points coming in the first 1:50 of the extra frame. Fuelling, despite missing a game winner moments before, threw the final knockout blow in what could be the best game we will see on the girl’s side all season.
“Her level of confidence in herself grew tonight more than I’ve ever seen. She has that inside of her and tonight it really came out and she really stepped up big time for us,” Norwell coach Eric Thornton said of Fuelling.
Knockout analogy and all, it would be cliche to compare a non-boxing sport event to a heavyweight prize fight, wouldn’t it?
Probably a good thing that I have always been a fan of the cliche.
6-0 Norwell hosting 10-0 Garrett at the always fun Castle. Even with spectators reduced to parents/guardians, there is just something about the energy in The Castle that makes every game feel bigger. And nothing could feel bigger than arguably the best two teams in the area going head to head. It was like one of those dream matches that the NE8 and NECC juggernauts don’t actually need to play, but we are all so glad they did.
There it was on Saturday night, the shining star of the area with body blow after body blow. In the end, it was Norwell who packed more of a punch.
Early on, these two teams mirrored each other about the way we expected they would. There are a lot of parallels between them and it showed as they traded shot after shot. One teams hits a big three, the other team answers. One team gets a timely stop on defense, the other reciprocates. As soon as Bailey Kelham drilled a three with 45 seconds left in the first, it looked like Garrett may be on the upswing, headed to the first quarter break with a lead. Then Kennedy Fuelling answered right back with a triple of her own from a few feet behind the three point line.
We were tied 10-10 at that first break. Blow for blow, they were so even and so equal.
The difference I anticipated early ended up being a real one: the interior. While Skyla Tomasek and Grace Bradtmueller held their own a lot for Norwell, the pacing up and down the court was in the favor of Garrett’s Morgan Ostrowski, who scored seven first half points by doing a variety of things. Ostrowski’s range and post work was really efficient in the second quarter.
After Lauren Bales hit a three to answer a Taylor Gerke shot, Norwell actually led 21-20 in the back and forth first 14 minutes of the game. But that is about when Ostrowski decided to let off a little shine. With 1:26 left in the first half, Ostrowski buried an open three pointer before taking a charge from Maiah Shelton on the other end, massively swinging momentum to the Railroaders.
“There were several plays there that Ostrowski made that really hurt going into halftime,” Thornton said. “She just kind of took over. They really took it to us there.”
Garrett led 32-23 before Kaylee Fuelling’s closing moments shot sent the game to the locker room with a Garrett lead but Norwell having something to feed off.
“You look back, it might be a little bit bigger now than it was then,” Thornton said of the last basket of the half. “We just had to get our kids back to believing that we have to do what we do just a little bit better. There are no secrets, we can’t change, we can’t create doubt in their mind. We’ve got to just come back and try to win the third quarter. That was really the message.”
That little hint of momentum was all Norwell really needed. Just because you lose a few round in a prize fight doesn’t mean you are out. So Norwell, as we’ve seen them do so many times, dusted themselves off and fought back. There is a reason that they ultimately extended their winning streak in The Castle to 14 straight games; 29 if you only count regular season games. It was Kaylee Fuelling, of course, who pushed them back into the game with a three pointer with 2:52 to play in the third. Bradtmueller tied the game up at 40 with 54 seconds left in the third, putting back a Fuelling miss before Ostrowski shoveled in a shot to beat the buzzer and give the Railroaders the edge heading into the final quarter.
“No matter how far behind we are, no matter how far ahead, my team is going to push themselves and do the best they can,” Kaylee Fuelling said.
“You just continue to remind them you have to play with freedom without worrying about the result. The outcome may not be what you want but if they don’t play with that freedom, we are going to freeze,” Thornton said. “Have that freedom to go out there and make plays.”
The fourth quarter’s slugfest started as a defensive one. No team scored until Tomasek’s foul shots nearly two minutes in tied the game up. Moments later, Kelham hit a three to sway momentum again. And the fourth quarter turned into just what the first was: back and forth, blow for blow, right down to the last 25.8 seconds where Kennedy Fuelling and Gerke traded free throw makes to force overtime.
But only after that Kaylee Fuelling miss that was oh so close to rolling in.
“I was ready to play but I was just disappointed in myself that I missed that. I was wide open, I had an easy shot. But I think my team was ready, we knew that we could get that game,” Fuelling said.
“She really wanted that. But the good thing was, she wasn’t down on herself. She knew she had it, ‘man I thought I had that’ rather than ‘crap, I missed it,'” Thornton added. “That’s what I loved about her tonight in overtime. She had that confidence from regulation on how it ended and then she continued to believe. And again, freedom without hesitation, kids are going to make some plays.”
You know the rest: three pointer, mid range pull up, layup and-one and another three pointer. 11 points, 110 seconds, one scorer and Norwell stays unbeaten.
Kaylee Fuelling finished with 24 points while playing all but 45 seconds of the game. She was followed by Kennedy Fuelling (nine points, six rebounds) and Maiah Shelton (nine points, seven rebounds). Garrett was paced by Kelham’s 18 points and 10 points, 13 rebounds from Ostrowski.
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