Columbia knew Wellington had improved a lot from last year and were ready for a tough challenge in the Lorain County League on December 6.
At Raiders Stadium, the long-awaited battle quickly turned in Columbia’s favor. By the time Wellington got level, the deficit was so large, Colombia emerged with a 60-37 win.
Columbia’s first focus was to overcome Wellington’s size advantage with 6-foot All-Ohioan Brook Lehmkuhl in the paint with 5-11 Gabe Miller.
Despite being undersized, Columbia outscored the Dukes, 37-31. Delaney Frisconi recorded 10 rebounds. Rachel Washburn scored seven points and led the team with 14 points.
“We knew (Lehmkuhl) was really good,” Washburn said. “We needed to put it away and keep it off the board. I thought our center and guards did a really good job of doing that.”
Lehmkuhl held on to six points while Miller scored five. Guard Taylor Morris scored 19 points with four three-pointers.
Despite Columbia being deep with its scorers, Washburn had the strong hand with three 3-pointers in the second half. This came after Wellington took a 6-0 lead to open the third quarter.
“(Columbia) is a very good team and they are very deep,” Wellington coach Nathan Morris said. “They had three in double figures and four nearly in double figures. They have a number of mainstays to score, but someone else will step up. Tonight it was Washburn.
Point guard Elise Champagne scored 12 points and Brie Heidecker came off the bench to score 11 points.
“We moved the ball very well. We felt comfortable and settled down a little bit. It was very aggressive (at first). We have to remember to relax and play our game,” Champagne said.
Wellington kicked its first field goal of the night, but didn’t score one for the rest of the quarter, as Columbia went on a 15-0 run to take the lead, 20-5, to start the second.
“I was really excited for this game tonight because we haven’t played (against) a lot of guys yet,” Columbia coach Corey Taylor said. “We’re a small team as you can see there and (Wellington) has a couple of really strong players. I thought we did a really good job of getting to the basket in the first half and especially in the first quarter.”
Colombia remained unbeaten with a score of 3-0 (2-0 in LC8). After starting the season 3-0, Wellington fell to 3-1 (1-1 in LC8).
