NEW WASHINGTON – At some point before tip-off of its Division III district title game Saturday against Norwalk, the Ashland girls basketball team decided that a trip to the Sweet 16 was just too good to pass up.
Both squads featured arguably the best teams in their programs’ respective histories. But the Arrows stormed out of the gate with the best half they have played all season, then were simply unflappable from the free-throw line while holding on in the fourth quarter at Buckeye Central High School.
The sum of all those parts led to a 58-44 victory and Ashland’s first district championship since 1979 before a rousing orange-and-black crowd.
Incredibly, it came against the same Norwalk team that bulldozed the Arrows in their season-opening game, 59-25.
“We all played together and we knew what it took for us to get to this moment,” said junior guard Madison Hoffman, who scored a career-high 21 points and was 8-for-8 from the free-throw line in the game’s final six minutes. “We weren’t just going to let them take it from us. We wanted it too bad.”
The second-seeded Arrows (20-5) led 31-8 at halftime and never trailed the top-seeded Truckers (22-3), who won their first-ever league title this year and were ranked eighth in the MaxPreps Division III state poll.
Ashland and fifth-year head coach Renee Holt move on to the regional semifinals to face seventh-ranked Toledo Notre Dame Academy (19-6), which rocked Toledo Central Catholic on Saturday, 60-22. That game will be 8 p.m. Wednesday at Bluffton University.
“We thought about the pain after losing by (34 points to Norwalk) in the first game of the season,” AHS junior Kennedy Lacey said. “Today we stepped it up, had the energy in the beginning and from there on out we didn’t stop.”
Fouls were mounting for key players on both teams early in the fourth quarter, but Truckers sophomore Emmie Leber netted back-to-back buckets and dragged her team within 43-38 with 5:54 to play.
The scoring surge had the Norwalk fans at a fever pitch and forced an Ashland timeout.
But the Truckers – who returned five starters from a 17-7 team a year ago and had four players from their district-champion team in 2023 – didn’t score again until the 1:21 mark.
The Arrows missed a variety of contested layups down the stretch, but managed to slowly pull away at the free-throw line. Behind shots at the stripe from Hoffman, Lacey, sophomore Cici Steury (11 points) and senior Lauren Green, Ashland was 15-of-16 from the line in the fourth quarter.
The Truckers, meanwhile, were crucially off the mark time and time again from the free-throw line, hitting just 7-of-22 freebies in the contest (5-of-16 in the second half).
It was a backbreaker for an NHS squad that made 67 percent of its free throws in the regular season.
“In the first half, we came out flat and indecisive, we weren’t making shots,” first-year Norwalk head coach Kyle Brubaker said. “Then in the second half, we cut it to five … and that’s when we started really missing bunnies and free throws.”
“We certainly were not expecting what happened in the first game of the year to be even remotely close to (Saturday’s game),” he added. “We knew if they got off to a good start that they would feel good about that.
“Credit to (Holt) and her players. She’s got them playing their best basketball at tournament time and that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
Leber (team-high 18 points, 7 rebounds) and junior guard Trinity Lazzara (12 points, 7 rebounds) combined to score 30 of Norwalk’s 44 points. Unfortunately for them, 26 of those came after halftime and they were the only two Truckers to score more than one field goal.
Senior NHS guard and District 6 Player of the Year Abby Koenig entered with more than 1,000 career points, but the All-Ohioan finished with just three against Ashland.
As a team, the Truckers finished 18-of-62 from the field (29 percent) and made just 1-of-8 shots from downtown.
“They got into their game in the third quarter, they got comfortable and I’m glad we had that first-half lead (so that) we had some room to make those mistakes,” said Holt, whose squad was outscored 23-10 in the third while committing seven of its 12 turnovers for the game.
“They capitalized on them, but I’m glad we adjusted and finished the third, and hit free throws down the stretch in the fourth.”
The Arrows exhibited snappy passing and gritty defense in the first quarter to fuel their fast-break offense.
While the Truckers tried to stretch out their possessions, Ashland pushed the pace and built an 18-4 lead after the first quarter.
When Steury opened the second quarter with a 3-pointer off an assist from Green, the Arrows were up 21-4 and were 5-of-8 from downtown.
“We came in as underdogs and they came in thinking they were going to beat us because of that first game,” Steury said, “but we responded and showed them that this game is what matters.”
Ashland senior guard Laney McNamara hit a jumper in the lane to give the Arrows a game-high 24-point lead at 29-5. The Truckers didn’t make their first field goal of the second quarter until there was 1:37 remaining before halftime.
At the break, Norwalk had more turnovers (nine) than points (eight) and Ashland had five different players with at least four points.
Lacey (game-high 11 rebounds) and junior forward Camryn Cox (5 points, 7 rebounds) helped give the Arrows a variety of second-chance scoring opportunities as they totaled a 37-23 advantage on the glass.
It was a perfect storm of execution for AHS, a program that had just one appearance in the district finals in the last three decades.
“We told the girls (at halftime), ‘Hey, we need to get this thing to 10 and then we feel like things will really tighten up for Ashland,” Brubaker said. “‘At this point, we’ve got to throw the game plan out the window and we’ve just got to be uber-agressive.’
“If we could have gotten off to a good start, maybe it would have been a different vibe, but they were hitting a lot of shots, moving the ball well.”
Leber and Lazzara worked enough scoring magic in the third quarter to get Norwalk within 41-31 heading to the fourth, and Lacey, Cox and Green all were staring down foul trouble.
But Ashland got critical minutes off the bench from McNamara, Vantilburg, sophomore Grace Tobias and senior Brylyn Mottayaw to help hold the Truckers at bay just long enough.
Norwalk finished the season with its first-ever league title, a Sandusky Bay Conference Lake Division co-championship with Bellevue (24-1), the No. 1-ranked team in Division IV.
The Truckers won a program-record 20 regular-season games – including a victory over Bellevue – and finished one win away from their second district title in three years.
“There could be a little discussion on who’s the best team in school history, but obviously we’re a part of it,” Brubaker said. “We’ve got the first league title in school history in an absolute monster of a conference.”
“We knew Ashland had been playing very, very well as a team and they had that competitive fire,” he said, “and at times, our competitive fire has been inconsistent, and that’s on me.”
The Arrows, meanwhile, have built their own case for best team in program history.
They also set a school record for regular-season wins (17), captured their first league title in 30 years and now have tied the school record for single-season wins (20) with a pair of AHS teams from over 40 years ago.
“When I stepped into this job, they were (1-22 the year prior),” Holt said. “My first couple years, I won three games, four games and we were in the basement. This program hasn’t seen success like this, so it takes a village, it takes a community, and the community showed up today. That was really cool to see.”
Hoffman, whose 15 second-half points seemed to come at every critical juncture, said Saturday was unforgettable.
“This is what we’ve wanted,” she said. “This is what we’ve worked so hard for and I love this team and this set of girls so much.”