For(tkamp) the win

FORT RECOVERY — Kierra Wendel was on point from the free-throw line.

But she had a rare double miss from the stripe in overtime, her team leading by just one.

Paige Fortkamp covered for her classmate.

Fortkamp pulled down the offensive rebound on Wendel’s second miss and put it back for two points. At the other end, the Cardinals’ attempt at a game-tying 3-pointer bounced off the rim as the Fort Recovery High School girls basketball team hung on for a 53-50 victory in the Division IV Wapakoneta District sectional championship game Saturday night at Fort Site Fieldhouse.

“It’s a game of highs and lows,” said Fort Recovery coach Holly Gann, whose team won its sixth consecutive sectional championship. “You just hope that your high is when the time runs out.”

New Bremen coach Chris Burden, whose fifth-seeded Cardinals (13-10) trailed by a dozen in the first half but held a two-point advantage with 1:57 to play in regulation, was pleased with the way his squad battled down the stretch.

“Couple things go our way that’s a different game,” he said. “Games like that, it’s the little things. We talk a lot about that.

“Fort Recovery did the little things at the right time.”

Fort Recovery (16-6), which is seeded fourth, advances to the district semifinal against the Midwest Athletic Conference foe Minster Wildcats, at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Wapakoneta. The Wildcats, the district’s top seed and ranked fourth in the state, won state titles in 2018 and 2019 and were en route to the state tournament in 2020 before it was canceled because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Minster defeated Fort Recovery 58-27 when they met during the regular season Feb. 4.

The Indians had a chance to win it at the end of regulation but Fortkamp’s potential game-winning triple didn’t go in. Fort Recovery won the tip in the extra period, and 12 seconds in Alli Vaughn drained a trey from the left wing on a Wendel assist.

The home team never trailed again.

New Bremen’s Madison Cordonnier, who led the Cardinals with 17 points, hit a jumper from the left elbow to bring the Cardinals within one, 49-48, with 1:45 to go.

Wendel drove the right side of the lane for two points, and Ellie Roetgerman answered with a bucket to make it a one-point game again, this time with 48 seconds remaining.

Wendel, who was 6-of-7 from the stripe during regulation, got fouled with her team in the double bonus. The first shot plunked off the rim. The second did the same, but Fortkamp, who had four fouls at that point after being whistled for two in the game’s first 93 seconds, muscled her way toward the glass for the board and put the ball back up and in for the three-point advantage.

“When you come out and get a couple quick fouls early, you could just shut down,” Gann said. “You could sit down on the bench and you could be thinking about those negative thoughts.

“But that is just a true test of Paige. She’s resilient, she’s resilient in everything she does. She fought through it and found a way to come back and contribute to the team even when things were rough. She was able to weather that storm and get a big basket when we needed it.”

Wendel led Fort Recovery with 17 points, and Vaughn was second with 13 points. Whitley Rammel joined them in double figures with 10 points.

Burden called timeout with 14 seconds to play in order to set up the would-be game-tying shot. Cordonnier got the ball on the right wing and was immediately blanketed by the feisty Tribe defense. Barely able to break free, Cordonnier, who has signed to play at the University of Findlay next season, dribbled to her right and threw up a 3-pointer. The ball went off the right side of the rim, hit the backboard then fell to the floor as time expired.

“We knew coming in that they were going to pressure (us) and get after it,” Burden said. “I thought our guards did a pretty good job of handling their pressure and trying to get it into the spots that we wanted to. We did for the most part.”

Early on, it looked as if the Indians were going to run past the Cardinals. A stretch of 11 straight points that spanned the end of the first quarter gave the home team a 15-5 advantage, and with less than a minute to go before halftime Fort Recovery led by a dozen.

But Cordonnier went 7-for-7 from the free-throw line and scored 10 of her team’s 13 points in the third quarter to get the Cardinals within five, 34-29, with one quarter remaining.

Roetgerman, who finished with 15 points, powered her way to seven points in the fourth quarter. Aliyah Truman, who didn’t score through the first three periods, blasted a 3-pointer midway through the fourth quarter for a 39-36 NB lead — it’s first since going ahead 5-4 late in the first — and got three the hard way with 1:57 left in regulation to put her team on top, 45-43.

Rammel made a pair of free throws at the 41.9-second mark to tie the score, and the Cardinals failed to re-take the lead as they turned the ball over 20 seconds later.