Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
WABASH - Valley's performance against Wabash could be summed up with two names: JayDee Parker and Eric Love.
The two combined to score 50 points, with Parker scoring 29 of them, as Valley cruised over Wabash 77-67 Friday night.
The first quarter was a foreshadowing of what was to come from Valley. Off the opening tip, Love came down the court and nailed a three. He added another five points in the first quarter to help Valley to a 17-9 first-quarter lead.
Wabash was led early and often by J.R. Hensley. Hensley picked up the offensive slack for the Apaches by pouring in 13 first-half points.
Despite Hensley's scoring, Valley refused to relinquish their lead. When Love began to miss from the field, Parker stepped up. Parker had 13 points in the second quarter, but Wabash continued to hang around.
Big three-pointers by guards Ben Rans and Ryan Elward took a chunk out of the Valley lead. Then with a second left in the first half Hensley nailed a jumper off of an out-of-bounds play to slice Valley's lead to six.
According to Valley coach Gregg Sciarra, the key to the offensive outburst in the first half was the play of point guard Noah Silveus.
"I thought that Noah Silveus did a good job of penetrating and dishing to some people," Sciarra said. "It was one of his better games. While Silveus didn't have any points, he had a game-high 7 assists."
If there was any doubt in the first half that Valley wouldn't come away with a win that thought was quickly erased in the third quarter.
The third quarter was Parker time. Parker started the half with a short jumper. He topped his second-quarter performance by going 6 of 7 from the field and scoring 14 points. Love had his only points in the quarter on three three-pointers. Four points by Brandon Eaton gave Valley 27 third-quarter points, which nearly matched their point total in the entire first half.
"I think the third quarter was big for us." Sciarra said. "We had some players in foul trouble in the first half. We just let them have the second quarter so we could have all our players for the second half."
While Wabash was able to put points on the board, it couldn't put them up at the rate of Valley. Wabash started the quarter with a 5-0 run. The Vikings answered back with an 8-0 run of their own.
Valley was able to match Wabash's runs by controlling every facet of the game. They outrebounded the Apaches 25-15, dished out more assists 18-15, and committed less turnovers 20-16.
It also didn't hurt that Valley shot 76 percent from the field while holding Wabash under 50 percent. Other than Hensley, Wabash had only one other player in double figures. Unfortunately Elward's 10 points weren't enough to make a game of it.
Wabash made a late run outscoring Valley by nine late in the game to make the score appear closer than the game actually was.
Besides Love and Parker, the Vikings were helped by Eaton, who had a solid game with 11 points, five rebounds and five assists.
Valley (5-10) is at Bremen Friday.
