BENTON — Outside of a five-minute stretch, Tuesday night’s season-opening boys basketball game between Wawasee and Fairfield was pretty even. During the five-minute stretch, which began with a buzzer-beating trey to end the first quarter, the host Fairfield Falcons (1-0) went on a 21-2 run, leading them to a 78-57 win over the Warriors (0-1). “I thought for three quarters, we played them pretty even,” first-year Wawasee coach Steve Wiktorowski said. “We really, honestly, fell apart in the second quarter. We knew that, but what I was much happier with was that we recognized that. We could have really fallen apart, but we came in at halftime and regrouped, made a few adjustments and I felt like the kids performed better in the second half.” Wawasee did play Fairfield much more tightly in the second half, but by that time, the outcome was already decided. In the opening half, Fairfield hit 15 of 30 field goal attempts, including 7 of 9 from behind the arc, where it was 4 of 4 during the 21-2 spurt. Asked if he had anticipated Fairfield’s sharp shooing, Wiktorowski had a simple answer – “No”. “They got on a run and everybody seemed to jump up 10 notches in confidence,” he said. “You need to adjust,” he added. “In that quarter, we didn’t adjust, we didn’t talk.” While the Warriors weren’t talking, the Falcons were scoring. “We’ve got good shooters,” Fairfield coach Troy Beachy said. “They know if they’re open (they can shoot it) and we’re OK with that. I felt like we weren’t shooting contested shots. We tell them, ‘If your feet are set and you’re open, go ahead a knock it down.’ We don’t want to get too happy with it and live by it, but certainly that run helped.” The hottest of the Fairfield shooters was senior John Stack, who came off the bench to score 14 points on 5-of-5 shooting, and a perfect 4 of 4 on three-point attempts. “He was a huge boost to come in off the bench and score 14 points in the first half,” Beachy said of Stack. “As a senior, he accepted his role coming off the bench and he strived tonight.” Fairfield had six players score at least eight points, with 6-foot-2 junior Joe Line leading the way with 27 points and 12 rebounds from his guard/forward position, making 13 of 17 free throws. For Wawasee, junior Alex Clark had 18 points and five rebounds, with junior Stori Bright contributing 12 points and six boards. “Alex did a pretty good job for only having a couple of full practices (due to an injury) and Stori Bright did a real nice job,” Wiktorowski said. “(Bright) gave us real nice energy with his defense and he did some nice things for us offensively.” Also for Wawasee, junior Aaron Voirol had nine points and three steals off the bench. Implementing a completely new system at Wawasee, Wiktorowski knew there would be a learning curve, so he didn’t take the loss too hard, though it did snap a four-game winning streak against the Falcons. “I’m disappointed in the score,” he said. “I’m not disappointed in the effort we gave and I’m very happy with the improvement we made when we could have really, completely fallen apart.” Going into Saturday’s home opener against Angola, Wiktorowski would like to see his defense improve, as well as the 17 turnovers his team committed, seven of which were in the decisive second quarter. “Turnovers is clearly what hurt us,” he said. “That’s when they went on the run. That was my biggest fear coming into tonight. If a team could come and really put a lot of pressure on us, with everything we had to put in, we just weren’t as prepared as we needed to be against a good, athletic team. That ended up being the case. We do need to work on that.” Saturday’s contest begins with the junior varsity game at 6:15 p.m.
