Columbus North had all the momentum going in the first half of the championship game of the Columbus East Sectional Saturday night against Bloomington South, and it looked like the girls basketball sectional trophy with go back to the Bull Dogs.
The Panthers decided to turn the tide.
Bloomington South pressed North a lot in the second half and it put the odds back in favor of the Panthers. The Bull Dogs never gave up at the end, but came up a little short in a 50-45 season-ending loss.
North senior Nadia Lomax led the charge right out of the gate. She hit two 3-pointers to put the Bull Dogs ahead 6-0. The Panthers then climbed back to tie the game at 8-8. Lomax then responded again with a triple to put the Bull Dogs ahead 11-8 after the first quarter.
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“Nadia was really good early. She made three 3s early and made another basket,” North coach Pat McKee said. “They then shifted and made it harder for her.”
Lomax extended the lead to 13-8 with a basket, but then went quiet the rest of the game. Her teammates picked up things in for the rest of the first half.
Annie Anderson hit two free-throws, and Alexa McKinley hit a jumper to put the Bull Dogs (18-8) ahead 18-10. After Bloomington South (21-3) cut it to 18-14, Anderson again hit two free throws with less than a second left to give North a 20-14 halftime lead.
The Panthers hit 9 of 15 from 3-point range in the first half of a win against the Bull Dogs 11 days earlier. In the first half Saturday’s game, however, Bloomington South went 0 for 11 from the beyond the arc.
After a free throw by the Panthers to open the third quarter, Sierra Norman hit a 3-pointer from the left side to extend the lead to 23-15.
Bloomington South took its first lead of the game with a 10-0 run that included its first triple of the game to go ahead 26-25. McKinley silenced the run by draining a 3-pointer to put North back ahead 26-25.
The Panthers then took a 27-26 lead before University of Southern Indiana recruit Addy Blackwell knocked down a 3 at the buzzer for a 30-26 lead going into the fourth quarter.
The Bull Dogs got it to 36-34 midway through the fourth quarter, but then the 3s poured in for Bloomington South, with Lauren Conner hitting two of them during an 8-0 run that would eventually seal the game.
The Panthers pressed North a lot more on Saturday than in the teams’ first matchup.
“They hit their shots a little better, but they are a really good-shooting team. Give them credit. They are really good,” McKee said. “I thought we handled their physically not perfect, but reasonably well for the first half and maybe part of the third quarter. Sometime in there, they picked it up to another level. We made a couple of unforced turnovers, and they hit a shot or two and got momentum. We didn’t quit, but we got in a deep enough hole when they had their little run, we couldn’t get it all back.”
Saturday marked the first time that a Columbus school hasn’t won the sectional since Bloomington South won in 2010.
Lomax was the Bull Dogs lone senior.
“I have nothing but good things to say about Nadia. She played like a senior. She played with passion,” McKee said. “As much as I say about her as good of a player, I have even more good things to say about her a person. She became a tremendous leader for the group. The kids really ended up looking up to her tremendously and understood that she was all for them and they were for her.”
Lomax reflected upon her career as a Bull Dog.
“I think we made a lot of progress this year, and we had a lot of fun memories all the time,” Lomax said. “I think I gave (the underclassmen) an example of what leadership is. I had to fill a lot of the leadership positions, maybe some that I wasn’t comfortable in like being more vocal. I knew I had to step out of my comfort zone and show them that is what you need to do to be a good leader on your team.”
