No. 6 Penn Nips Warsaw In Sectional FinalChoked up by emotion, third-year Warsaw girls basketball coach Lenny Krebs couldn’t have been any more accurate with his description of Saturday night’s 45-44 loss to No. 6 Penn in the championship game of Class 4A Sectional 4 at the Tiger Den. “I felt like we made them earn everything they got today,” said Krebs, whose team came oh so close to the program’s first sectional title since 2015. “You can only contain some of those people for so long before they’re gonna get some points. (Reganne) Pate’s gonna find a way to get some shots off. (Kaitlyn) Costner’s gonna get to the rim eventually. I thought we were able to disrupt some of the things they wanted to do. We had a few let downs where we allowed them to penetrate the zone. “We use the term turnover-touchdown, pick-6 so to speak … we gave up some pick-2s, if that’s what you wanna call them, couple times where Costner was able to get the ball moving toward the basket. Those are the things we have to avoid against a team like this. Anytime we were able to set our defense, I thought we were pretty solid. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough.” The Lady Tigers, who were 4-5 early in the season after losing five straight during a stretch in which junior point guard Kensie Ryman was sidelined with a broken collarbone, won 12 of their last 15 games and finished the season 16-8. Penn extended its win streak to 11 games since a 44-40 loss at Carmel on Jan. 4 and improved to 25-2. Penn will play No. 2 Crown Point (26-0) in the first semifinal game of the LaPorte Regional Saturday. Crown Point beat Penn 49-37 in the championship game of the Hall of Fame Classic on Dec. 27. While the Lady Kingsmen have won nine sectional titles and are 254-31 in their 11th season under coach Kristi Ulrich’s guidance, Ulrich knew her team was pushed to the limit Saturday by the upset-minded Lady Tigers. “This is a tough place to play, no matter who you’re playing against, this is a very difficult place to play,” said Ulrich, who led Penn to the 2016 state championship. Ulrich went on to say her team’s tournament experience was a big key in pulling out the win. “Most of these kids have played in big-game situations over the last couple of years, especially our junior class. I’m just really proud of their resiliency and making some big plays down the stretch.” The teams were knotted at 16 after one quarter of play before the hosts led 25-23 at halftime and 37-36 heading into the final frame. Warsaw led by as many as five points on two occassions, while Penn’s largest lead of the game was 6-2 early in the first quarter. The Lady Kingsmen took a 45-42 lead, and then Warsaw senior Brielle Harrison’s bucket cut the deficit to one with 59 seconds remaining. Penn turned the ball over when a pass sailed out of bounds with 42 ticks left, and the Lady Tigers worked the clock for what they hoped would be the game-winner. Junior Kensie Ryman, whose half-court heave in the regular season finale gave Warsaw a 63-61 win at Elkhart Central in the regular season finale, attempted a shot in the lane in the waning seconds, but her effort rolled off the rim and Penn grabbed the rebound and the hardware. Krebs’ message to his team after the game was heartfelt. “How much I love them,” Krebs said when asked what he told his players. “The longer I’ve done this, the more I realize it’s not always about winning and losing, it’s about the relationships you build with these young ladies. I can tell you the three years I’ve had here, they’ve been special. This has been one of those roller coaster years where we won our first four, we lost five in a row, and we went on a stretch where we won 12 out of 14 coming into today. “Very few people outside that locker room understand the journey that we went on with that group of people. My heart breaks for them because they went all in. I told them it hurts right now but the smoke’s gonna clear at some point and they’re gonna realize what we accomplished this year and how much better we got. And we’re gonna realize what we had. How do you comfort a bunch of 15, 16, 17-year-old kids who just played their heart out for you? I just let them know how much I love them.” Senior Kaylee Patton led Warsaw with 15 points, 14 rebounds and a pair of assists, while classmate Harrison finished with 14 points and eight boards. Ryman, whose collarbone injury kept her out of Warsaw’s 41-28 loss to Penn in November, tallied six points and four assists. She made all of her free throw attempts as the Lady Tigers were 19 of 26 at the charity stripe, compared to Penn’s 7 of 11. The Lady Kingsmen, who were outrebounded 38-23, got 16 points from Trinity Clinton and 13 from Pate, who became the sixth player in the history of Penn’s storied program to score 1,000 career points when her three-pointer tied the game at 39.
