One of the toughest things to do in the world of sports is to go undefeated throughout a season. As the wins keep piling up, the target on your back keeps getting more visible as you're getting more attention from all around you.
Another extremely difficult thing to do is to win exactly like you did for the previous 11 games after you've had 13 days of a gap since you last played. That was what the Noblesville Millers faced on Friday afternoon against a highly-touted Homestead team that had been dealt their first loss of the season on Tuesday vs. Columbus North in the Columbus North Tournament championship.
The Spartans were hungry to get back to winning and the Millers were more than ready to get back on the court playing in game fashion, instead of practicing against themselves.
4A #3 Homestead 58, 4A #4 Noblesville 44 - (Cougar Fieldhouse, at Greenfield-Central)
Spartans 6 29 15 8 - 58
Millers 6 13 12 13 - 44
The first quarter started off as a speedy version of chess. Noblesville and Homestead both trying to figure each other out as quickly as possible.
Baskets by Wood, O'Reilly and Shannon for the Millers helped them keep up with the Spartans, but six fouls in the first helped Homestead knock down four free throws for most of their points to tie it 6-6 after one.
Homestead stormed out in the 2nd to open up the game and get themselves a cushioned lead by taking the quarter with command, 29-13, for a halftime score of 35-19.
Noblesville managed to outscore Homestead in the second half overall 25-23, but that still left the Millers on the short end of a 58-44 decision, giving them their first loss of the season and dropping them to 11-1 overall.
There are some factors as to why this first loss came when it did. It's not that Noblesville wasn't ready to play Homestead. Those really cannot be put into words. The Millers were taken out of their game more than they have been at any point this season thus far.
The Spartans had Noblesville down 54-34 midway through the 4th before Noblesville ended the game on a 10-4 run.
Sophomore Karissa McLaughlin led all scorers with a game-high 25 points and was joined in double-digits by Lindley Kistler with 12. Madisen Parker (8), Grace German (7) and Josie Fisher (6) produced the remainder of Homestead's offensive output.
Katelyn O'Reilly and Alexis Shannon each netted 12 points in the loss for the Millers. Cori Cain (6) and Emily Kiser (5) were key contributors off of the Noblesville bench.
Homestead (13-1) simply found ways to take Noblesville (11-1) completely out of what they normally succeed at and it worked exactly like head coach Rod Parker envisioned.
As Perry Williams and I talked about in the postgame show of our broadcast on Hamilton County TV, one of the most difficult things to do in the world of sports is to go completely undefeated. The tension of being perfect and doing everything possible to keep yourselves from being defeated can take a lot out of a team, as well as an individual.
Noblesville will get past this and they did with an evening victory over East Central. It's now time to start another winning streak. This team has a lot of experience and that alone will be a huge factor in how far this team decides it wants to go.
GO MILLERS!
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