Nicolet Girls Overwhelm Arrowhead

Wales – Nicolet coach Corey Wolf admitted she was as surprised as anyone that her Nicolet girls basketball team won so convincingly.

The Knights rolled to a 55-22 victory over Arrowhead Saturday night to win the WIAA Division 1 sectional title at Kettle Moraine High School. Nicolet improved its record to 23-2 and will face De Pere (22-3) in the round of eight, which is now referred to as “Super Tuesday." The game will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. 

Arrowhead, which finished third in the Classic Eight Conference, ended its season at 18-7. 

The Knights took control immediately and held a 17-5 lead at the end of the first quarter. The halftime score was 35-12. Then it really got ugly for Arrowhead. The Warhawks were held scoreless for the first 5 minutes 30 seconds of the third period. By that time, Wolf decided to pull in the reins and began to substitute freely. 

“Of course we expected a close game, it’s a sectional final game,” Wolf said. “We just played really well on defense.”

And leading the spark defensively was point guard Courtney Smith. The 5-3 junior had three steals in the first quarter, including two that led to baskets.

“Courtney’s probably the best on-the-ball defender that I’ve seen in high school,” Wolf said. “She can guard you straight up, it doesn’t matter how fast you are or how physical you are, she can really take point guards out of their game and I think she did that tonight.”

The Knights got another standout performance from senior guard Ashley Green, who led Nicolet with 14 points. Nicolet also got a solid effort from Gaby Bronson, who finished with 13 points. Bronson, a senior forward, admitted to being a bit tight against Hamilton Thursday night.

“Sometimes I get a little nervous before games,” Bronson said. “I didn’t want that to happen this time. I want to play every game like it’s our last game. It’s all or nothing. I don’t want to have any regrets.”

Although the Knights are playing extremely well, there is still room for improvement, Wolf said.

“I thought we turned it over way too much in the first half,” Wolf said.  “We like to play fast, but we take pride in being able to take care of the ball.”

And those were the kind of mistakes that cost the Knights in their 67-63 loss to Pius on Dec. 28.

“When you expose something, they take advantage of that,” Wolf said about the Lady Popes. “That is what happened the first time we played them. Our kids would break down for one play and they would expose us. We’re hoping that we fixed that.”

Right now, Nicolet is a team playing at the top of its game.

“We knew we wanted to do great things this season,” senior center Alex Cohen said. “We’re really excited about being here and we hope to take it even further.”