The flu wasn’t going to stop Carly Lemke.
She knows how much her Oconto Falls High School teammates need her in the girls basketball playoffs, so the senior really stepped up in the WIAA Division 3 regional semifinals Friday night.
Lemke tallied a team-high 16 points, hitting her first five shots, and the Panthers’ defense did the rest, smothering Wittenberg-Birnamwood in a 43-29 victory in Oconto Falls.
“I tried to stay hydrated and I really pulled through,” Lemke said. “I knew that when there’s a will, there’s a way. I don’t think I’ve ever been this sick.”
Lemke wasn’t the only Panthers player feeling under the weather for the game.
“It was a good gut check for us,” Oconto Falls coach Mike Kaczmarek said.
Wittenberg-Birnamwood (16-8, 12-2 Central Wisconsin Conference-8) stayed with Oconto Falls (20-3, 13-3 Bay) early and tied the game at 11. That’s when Kaczmarek switched from a man-to-man defense to a zone.
“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. The girls played outstanding defensively tonight.”
From that point on, it was all Oconto Falls. The Panthers outscored the Chargers 32-18 after the score was tied.
Micah Nier scored 19 of the Chargers’ 29 points. 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.
Holding the Wittenberg-Birnamwood offense in check was a key talking point for Kaczmarek prior to the game.
“I thought the magic number was 35,” Kaczmarek said. “If we could hold them under 35 I thought we could win,”
Oconto Falls closed out the opening half on an 11-2 run to take a 22-13 lead into halftime. Wittenberg-Birnamwood cut is deficit to four, 25-21, but the Panthers responded with an 11-4 spurt to start to pull away.
The Panthers, who were 15 for 30 from the field for the game, had good offensive balance. Liz Manns scored nine points. Oconto Falls’ leading scorer in the regular season, McKenna Larsen, was held to eight points. However, she set her teammates up a number of times with great passes. Liz Watzka added eight points, including two big 3s in the third quarter.
“It just shows how strong of a team we are,” Lemke said. “Anyone can score on our team.”
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