MENTONE - Maybe one shot from Saturday night's game tells the story for the Valley Vikings this year.

After a North Miami jumper with two seconds to play in the third quarter, Valley junior Jarvis Shepherd took the inbounds pass and nailed a shot from about 65 feet away. But the shot came a few ticks late as the buzzer had already sounded to signal the end of the quarter.

For the second time in three games, the Tippecanoe Valley Vikings went into the fourth quarter in good position to make a run and pick up a win. However, for the second time, Valley let the chance slip away in losing to the North Miami Warriors 68-55 on Saturday night.

The loss means that Valley is still looking for its first win just one season after winning a sectional championship. But even more so, it means that the Vikings start conference play on the wrong foot at 0-1.

"You're 0-2 going into the third game of the year and you still have a chance to be 1-0 (in the conference)," Valley head coach Gregg Sciarra said. "Warsaw is fairly decent and Columbia City I thought was a real good team. Not to take anything away from North Miami, but that should be a game we can compete in, and I thought they out battled us for loose balls. We didn't get that part of it done and that's not a good sign."

North Miami opened the fourth quarter with a layup from Jacob Riley that stretched the Warriors lead to eight points at 49-41. It looked as if the Vikings might be done, but they quickly began to fight back.

Just 13 seconds later, Brandon Eaton knocked in a jumper to close to within six points and then Noah Silveus canned his third three-pointer of the game to make the score 51-46 in favor of North Miami.

After Jarvis Shepherd made a free-throw, Scott Cooksey hit a lay-up to cut the lead to just two points with 5:16 to play. But North Miami's top player, Kenny Hanson, came up big with a three-pointer to push the lead back up to five.

Valley would not get any closer than that the rest of the way as Hanson scored 11 points in the quarter to extend the lead to the final 13 point difference.

Hanson, who had been averaging 25 points per game for North Miami, scored 20 points in the game, 15 in the second half. Nick Cain kept the Warriors above water until Hanson kicked it in with eight points and six rebounds in the first half. He ended with 16 points and 10 rebounds.

Silveus led Valley with 11 points and Shepherd came off the bench to score 10, including the most exciting shots of the game.

North Miami shot 50 percent from the field for the evening, often getting easy fast-break lay-ups after missed Valley shots. The Vikings, on the other hand, shot a disappointing 39 percent.

"A lot of our players don't know what they can do yet as a unit," Sciarra said. "They're working on that phase but they have a long, long way to go in all facets - getting back on defense sometimes, stopping the inside game, letting them penetrate. And it won't get any easier."

Strangely, Valley had nine turnovers in the opening quarter but lost by just four points in the first eight minutes.

The Vikings got progressively better at holding onto the ball after that and had just two turnovers in the final quarter. However, Valley was outscored by seven points in that frame.

Valley (0-3, 0-1) is at Whitko Friday. [[In-content Ad]]