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Warsaw's talented and tall front line picked the right time to begin to dominate opponents like everybody thought it could be doing all season.
Led by sophomore center Katie Elliott's school-record eight blocked shots, the Tigers accounted for a school-record 13 blocks in a 66-40 shellacking of Benton Central Thursday at the Tiger Den.
The previous school individual record was six by Sam Snyder. The previous team record was eight.
The Bison, playing their fourth game in five days, were frustrated all game long by the taller Tigers. The Warsaw frontline made things look very easy against Benton Central. Warsaw coach Will Wienhorst hopes it wasn't TOO easy.
"We are starting to do some good things," Wienhorst said. "The only concern is that after a performance like this in blocked shots, we have to come out and still move our feet, but it could happen that we depend on that. The officials let it happen as the game goes. We will have to move our feet and stop them defensively with our bodies, and then block the shots."
Warsaw's front line, which can put two 6-footers and two more near 6-footers in the lineup, also dominated the Bison on the boards by a 46-21 count with many coming off the offensive glass for the Tigers.
The Tigers made their case early on.
With Tiffany and Sherri Ross slicing up the Bison defense for 19 points combined, the Tigers jumped out to a 24-12 first quarter lead. Warsaw kept it up in the second quarter and scored 19 points and came with a 43-20 halftime lead in what might have been its best first-half effort of the season.
"I was really pleased, especially in the first half, with the way we played on both ends of the floor," Wienhorst said. "Benton Central is a good basketball team, and we just took them out of their game early."
Warsaw survived a ragged second half on offense by completely dominating the Bison on defense and holding them to 8 of 31 shooting. The Tigers particularly frustrated Bison leading scorer Carrie Musser, who was just 5 of 18 from the field and at point was shaking her head in disbelief on the bench.
Elliott added 17 points and eight rebounds to her blocked shots total. Sherri Ross added 13 points and Tiffany Ross collected 12 points.
And in probably her best performance in her short career as a Tiger, transfer Sam Wideman added eight points and 10 rebounds.
With all the attention going to the girls inside, it might have been the ability of guards Emily Niemier and Sarah Calhoun to get the ball inside. Calhoun led Warsaw with five assists.
"Sarah Calhoun, what she did more than anything else, is ran spots and that is why we got what we did," Wienhorst said. "She is the runner, and she got where she needed to go to take the pressure off our guards. The timing was there, which gave our posts the ball. She did a tremendous job for us. You don't have to directly involved in an assist or rebound, it is that team play. Our timing was definitely there in the first half."
The dominating effort inside was the second straight for the Tigers, who also took Manchester apart in the paint on Tuesday. It might be just in time for Warsaw, who start a string of three Northern Lakes Conference games on Saturday against a pair of twin towers in Wawasee's Lydia Carpenter and Karissa Evans.
"These two games this week were tuneups, and the big one is on Saturday," Wienhorst said.
Warsaw (10-5, 3-0) is at Wawasee in another makeup game at 3 p.m. Saturday. It will be a varsity-only game.
Benton Central fell to 9-7.
