The Warsaw Tigers are heading to Michigan City for their 4A Regional match-up against Crown Point Saturday with the intention of making it two winning Saturdays in a row.
The Tigers are into the regional round for the first time since 2017, when they topped East Chicago Central in double overtime but lost to Merrillville in the championship game that night.
“It’s a dream come true for me,” said Luke Yeager, the team’s lone senior who was in the fifth grade the last time the Tigers reached this level of the postseason. “We grew up watching guys that won sectionals and now it’s finally come true for us…and it’s awesome!”
Yeager only scored 10 points in two games during the Elkhart Sectional, but his presence in the lane on defense was disruptive for opposing offenses, and his two dunks in the championship game were the exclamation points on a title run that started well before last week.
Warsaw finished the regular season on a five-game winning streak capped off with an impressive 12-point win at Tippecanoe Valley.
The momentum from that streak clearly carried over into sectional week. After getting a first-round bye, Warsaw avenged a Jan. 15 loss at Concord by jumping out to an early 18-5 lead, ultimately beating the Minutemen by 13 in the semifinals.
When asked if he could point to a moment where he knew his team was poised to do what it took to win a sectional and make a postseason run, Head Coach Matt Moore didn’t hesitate.
“I think the first four minutes of the Concord game,” he said. “I could tell that we were at a level of focus. Obviously, we were making shots, but we were pretty dialed into executing what we had set out to do.”
He also believes not having a game for 10 days after the trip to Valley was beneficial to his team.
“This is a group that, with the break that we had coming off the Valley game, really was in a good place mentally and emotionally to be able to go through what we went through over those two games. I think we only trailed for a minute and 15 seconds in the sectional against two teams that won 36 games.”
One of the key words around this Tiger team has been consistency. The prime example of that has been the scoring touch of Luke Bricker, who has scored double figures in seven of the last nine games and pumped in a total of 36 points in the two games of the sectional.
But more than the scoring, Bricker hit a big 3-pointer in transition early in the fourth quarter of each of the games at North Side Gym to help quell potential rallies by Concord and Penn.
“Just being focused on what I can control,” Bricker said of how he’s going about trying to be more consistent during media day for the Tigers Wednesday. “Just putting in the work and knowing that my teammates are going to find me when it's important gives me the confidence to take big shots like those when we need them.”
For Moore, the sectional title was his first as a coach. He was asked if it was a relief to get that “monkey off his back.”
“I don't feel relief, really, in any sense,” he says. “I feel accomplished. I think there's a sense of pride knowing that you've been able to do something that you set out to do and accomplish. With that you're very proud of the effort that your team has played with.”
Warsaw (19-5) will play Crown Point (19-5) in the one-game regional at Michigan City. The winner advances to the 4A North Semi-state against an opponent and at a venue that will be announced Sunday by the IHSAA. Game time is scheduled for 8 p.m. Saturday.
Moore explains that the Bulldogs are good, but the diversity of the schedule the Tigers played this season and the change in format to a one-game regional, helps make preparing for Saturday’s game much easier.
“It's very different now because you don’t have many times during the season when you're just focusing on one game for the week,” Moore explains. “I think that they (Crown Point) line up with us in terms of what they do and how they play very nicely compared with teams that we've had on our schedule. You think of Carroll, you think of Penn and Concord that all present different problems. I think our guys take confidence from knowing we've had success in some of those games against similar type of teams.”
And his keys to winning Saturday?
“Can we take care of the basketball and minimize our turnovers? Can we get defensive rebounds and limit them to one shot? And then can we get the shots that we need to get, because when we do, we're really good.”
The Bulldogs are led in scoring by Jack Svetich at 15.2 ppg and Dikembe Shaw at 13.
They average a little over five 3-pointers per game and have shot under 60-percent at the free throw line, but still average almost 60-points per outing. They’ve won 11 of their last 12 games.
If the philosophy “styles make fights” is true, then it should be quite a battle for a trip to the final eight in 4A Saturday night.