(Photo courtesy of Bakerink Visuals)
The Norwalk girls basketball team begins its anticipated playoff run tonight at home, entering the Class 4A Regional Semifinals against Lewis Central. The game can be heard live on the KNIA3 stream, broadcast from Norwalk’s NPECC.
The Lady Warriors finished their regular season last week as the #3 team in Class 4A and Little Hawkeye Conference co-champions, an honor they share with #2 in 4A Dallas Center-Grimes. 19-2 overall and 11-1 in conference play, Norwalk secured their second consecutive conference title. They will take on a Lewis Central team that finished 9-13 overall and 4-6 in the Hawkeye Ten Conference. The Titans defeated Perry in the first round of substate, 50-35. Norwalk played Lewis Central back in mid-December, when the Warriors won 66-30 and forced 23 turnovers. Sophomore Braylyn Birmingham scored 34 points in that contest. The winner of tonight’s matchup will face the winner of Independence and Waterloo East in the substate final for a bid in the state tournament. The substate final will be played on Tuesday night.
Norwalk’s Braylyn Birmingham led the team in multiple categories during the regular season (30.7 PPG, 7.8 RPG, 3.3 APG, 2.5 SPG, 53% FG, 87% FT), finishing second in the state in points per game and first in free throw attempts and made free throws. Meanwhile, Lewis Central is led in scoring by junior Macie Vetter (14.8 PPG), who had a team-high 13 points in the last meeting between these two teams. Norwalk is in pursuit of their second consecutive state tournament appearance, while Lewis Central is aiming for their first bid since 2024, when they defeated Norwalk in the regional finals to punch their ticket. Norwalk head coach Joe Sigrist tells KNIA Sports this game will take a lot of preparation, but that’s something he feels his team has done well this season.
“We think we’re going to see a lot of zones, so we’ll have to knock down some shots, and we’ll have to learn how to attack the zones a little bit better this week. Our girls have done a great job of that all year: taking to coaching and going out and executing a scouting report.”
Norwalk’s one potential area of improvement from December’s matchup against Lewis Central is three-point shooting, in which they went 6 for 19 from beyond the arc (32%).
Tonight’s substate game will be called by Shaffer Landuyt and Steve Wermerskirchen and can be heard live on the KNIA3 stream. Pregame coverage will begin at 6:45 p.m. from Norwalk’s NPECC.