Dixie Heights overcame a nine-point halftime deficit to knock off Notre Dame, 55-44, Wednesday night in Edgewood.
The Colonels clamped down on defense in the third quarter, opening with a 10-0 run and holding the Pandas to only one made field goal in the frame.
Trailing 29-20 at the half, the Colonels got back-to-back 3-pointers from Jalynn Brooks and Coralee Pelfrey to begin the second half. Dixie’s top scorer on the season, Samantha Berman entering with 16 points per game, then got going after being limited to five points in the first half.
Berman buried a jumper then capitalized off a Notre Dame turnover with a drive and scoop shot to give Dixie its first lead of the game at 30-29. A pair of Berman free throws kept the Colonels in front, 34-32, heading to the fourth quarter.
“I wasn’t playing my game,” said Berman, who finished with 13 points and seven rebounds. “After that first half, the game did come to me with the help of my teammates. We were just moving the ball. As the game was flowing, the game started to flow to me. Then I started to get into the groove of my own game, and I started to get in the right head space.”
Notre Dame regained the lead at 35-34 with 5:26 to play, but Dixie ripped off six straight and never trailed again.
Rosemary Miller drained a three to cut the Colonels lead to 40-38 with 3:44 to go. That’s when Dixie delivered the knockout blow.
First came Ella Steczynski swishing her third triple of the game. Next, she headed to the free-throw line for a one-and-one but missed the front end. A Notre Dame lane violation gave Steczynski a second chance, and she buried both. On the Pandas possession that followed, Berman blitzed to midcourt to intercept a pass and finished with an uncontested layup to extend Dixie’s lead to 47-38.
The Colonels went 8-for-8 at the charity stripe in the game’s final minute to close it out. As a team, Dixie was 16-of-18 from the free-throw line.
Steczynski had a game-high 15 points and was a perfect 6-for-6 on free throws.
Notre Dame’s Noelle Hubert, the lone senior on the roster, entered the game averaging 19.5 points per game. The NKU commit was on pace for that with 10 first-half points.
“We just lost track of (Hubert) a little bit more than what we had worked on,” Dixie coach Joel Steczynski said.
In the second half, Hubert was held scoreless. She entered the contest hitting 44 percent from beyond the arc, with 43 of her 65 made field goals through 10 games coming from three-point range.
Coach Steczynski credited his team with understanding the importance of taking away Hubert’s step-back three opportunities.
“That’s her bread and butter,” Steczynski said. “Once we did that in the second half, and then we continued to play a little bit better off the ball as well, it showed. That was a big difference in the game.”
For Notre Dame, this was just its second loss of the season. The Pandas won their first eight games before falling to George Rogers Clark on December 20. Head coach Kes Murphy sees the defeat to Dixie as an opportunity for a young team to grow.
“Might this be a blessing in disguise? Yes, because my words don’t resonate with these guys. They’re still doing it their way,” Murphy said. “Until we start to hone in on what they’re being coached to do, it’s going to be the same old, same old inconsistent play, inconsistent in how we operate in the gym and outside. So, that’s essentially what it comes down to in that third quarter, same old stuff.”
Notre Dame, now 9-2 this season, will try to apply the lessons learned when it travels to play Simon Kenton on Friday at 6:30 p.m.
Dixie Heights improves its record to 9-4, including 4-1 against 9th Region competition and will face another region foe on Friday at 6 p.m. with a visit from Ryle.
