Tied midway through the third, defending 2A state champs pull away from Ottawa for tourney title

PONTIAC – Exactly four and a half minutes into the third quarter, Ottawa senior Marlie Orlandi drained a 3-pointer to tie the Pirates’ Bank of Pontiac Turkey Tip-Off title game against Peoria Notre Dame.

That tie – along with Ottawa’s hopes of an early season statement win over the defending Class 2A state champions – did not, however, survive much longer.

From that point onward, the Irish outscored Ottawa by 23 points en route to a deceivingly lopsided 57-34 final score, giving PND its 16th consecutive victory dating back to January and handing the Pirates their first defeat of the young season.

Peoria Notre Dame senior Julia Mingus’s 20 points, Lexi Baer’s 13 and Emy Wardle’s game-high eight assists – one more than Ottawa totaled as a team on its 11 field goals – led the Irish to the Turkey Tip-Off championship.

After the first quarter ended in a 7-7 tie – a score fit for IHSA football semifinal Saturday – the Pirates were forced to play the majority of the second and early third quarters from behind. Thanks to great defense against the dynamic Irish and a couple clutch 3s from Ella Schmitz and Orlandi, though, Ottawa’s deficits stayed manageable, and the Pirates trailed just 21-17 at halftime.

“Both teams were well-prepared, it’s the end of a long week, and it’s an energy game,” Pirates coach Brent Moore said. “You’ve got to have energy, you’ve got to have legs, and I think that showed with both teams missing shots. If we made some shots early, I really think we put more pressure on them, because we showed them right away, we were here to play. ...

“We tied it third quarter, and we proved to ourselves we are capable of being in a big-time game like this.”

A Skylar Dorsey 3-pointer a minute and a half into the second half and Orlandi’s trey with 3:30 remaining in the third both created ties. That proved to be when Ottawa’s thawing from a cold-shooting first half stalled, while PND just kept heating up.

A Mingus 3 broke the 26-26 tie reached by Orlandi’s bucket and started the defending Class 2A state champs on a game-ending 31-8 run covering the contest’s final 11 minutes.

“They kept coming back,” Notre Dame coach Layne Langholf said of the Pirates. “Obviously, they’re well-coached, they play hard, and they matched us intensity-wise. Honestly, I think they played harder than we did in the first half. But once we started getting the ball to both sides [of the floor], we knew we’d be fine.”

Ottawa – playing with a smaller rotation than PND, in comeback mode for much of the contest and struggling to defend/box-out Baer, who was fresh after spending most of the middle quarters on the bench with foul trouble – simply ran out of gas in the final quarter, the Peoria Notre Dame advantage surpassing 10 points 2:20 into the fourth and 20 with 2:27 to play.

Hailey Larsen tallied nine points and nine rebounds, Skylar Dorsey put in six points, Ashlynn Ganiere provided three assists off the bench and Orlandi overcame a cold-shooting start to lead the Pirates with 14 points, including four 3-pointers.

“We came into today with hopes to beat PND, a state champ, and we knew what we had to do. We just didn’t execute everything in the amount of time that we had,” Orlandi said. “We missed some shots that, if we made, would have been the difference. ...

“But 100%, this was a learning scenario for us. We learned a lot, we know what we’re capable of now, and we know the things we have to work on. I think [this week] shows how good of a team we can be this year.”

Ottawa committed 13 turnovers to PND’s nine and was outrebounded 36-28. Both Orlandi and Mary Stisser were voted to the all-tournament team.

“We saw a lot of good things throughout the week,” Moore said, “and then you get the opportunity to play in a high-leverage game like this against a state champion. We were really able to see where we are and what we need to zoom in on moving forward.

“We’re going to do that and get better, starting at practice Monday.”