Micah Nier tried, but she couldn’t do it herself.
The Wittenberg-Birnamwood High School forward didn’t get a lot of scoring help from her teammates. That along with Oconto Falls’ smothering defense spelled bad news for the Chargers.
Nier scored 19 points, but it wasn’t enough as Wittenberg-Birnamwood fell 43-29 in WIAA Division 3 regional semifinal Friday night in Oconto Falls.
“We just needed like that one play to get the team going, and we never had that moment tonight,” Chargers forward Taylor Bushman said.
Nier, a junior, was seven for 17 from the field, but the rest of the Wittenberg-Birnamwood team was just three for 22. From beyond the 3-point arc, the Chargers were three for 22; Nier was one for seven.
“Senior Makayla Hartman has been one of our leading scorers all year, had two points from the free-throw line,” Wittenberg-Birnamwood coach Mike Balliett said. “We’re not going to win many games when our leading scorers aren’t helping us too much.”
Siri Zeinert tallied five points and the Chargers got the rest of their five points from three players.
Oconto Falls (19-3) started the game playing man-to-man defense and when the game was tied at 11, Panthers coach Mike Kaczmarek knew he needed to make a switch.
“We gave up the baseline too much, too much dribble penetration,” Kaczmarek said. “We went to our 1-2-2 defense that we haven’t played all year. We wanted to take dribble penetration away, and we did that.”
Wittenberg-Birnamwood (18-6, 12-2 Central Wisconsin Conference-8) didn’t handle the defensive pressure very well and was outscored 32-18 the rest of the game.
Oconto Falls, the No. 1 seed in the regional, jumped out to a 7-2 lead, but Nier nearly single-handily got No. 4-seeded Wittenberg-Birnamwood back into the game. Nier scored seven of her team’s first 11 points as the Chargers tied the score at 11.
The Panthers were up by three after the first quarter and carried over a run into the second to go up 20-11. Oconto Falls took a 22-13 lead into halftime.
The Chargers (18-6) went on a run to start the third quarter to get within four, 25-21.
“That was the point where we should have capitalized on plays and make sure our possessions were solid,” Bushman said. “We kind of made sloppy errors and needed to be more fundamentally sound.”
The Panthers bumped their lead back up to 11, 36-25, with 2:48 left in the game. Wittenberg-Birnamwood couldn’t get its deficit under double digits the rest of the way.
Oconto Falls was led by Carly Lemke with 16 points. McKenna Larsen was held to eight points.
One bright spot looking ahead to next season is that Wittenberg-Birnamwood only loses two seniors: Bushman and Hartman.
“Like I told the girls in the locker room, these two seniors have done a lot for us,” Balliett said. “They’ve been part of three conference championships, they’ve been to the sectionals, been to regional finals.”
Bushman and Hartman have been best friends for a number of years, so to go out together was special.
“We’ve been together in basketball for a long time, we’ve shared each other’s ups and downs,” Bushman said. “We’ve just had each other’s backs and made each other better players.”
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