SYRACUSE – Wawasee was tantalizingly, and perhaps frustratingly, close to ending its Northern Lakes Conference losing streak Saturday night. Northridge, however, came up with the big plays in the final minutes to earn a 54-50 win at the Hardwood TeePee, extending the Warrior streak to 27 games over the last four seasons. The Warriors trailed by just four points at halftime, 33-29, in spite of the visiting Raiders hitting more than 75 percent of their shots in the first two quarters, including a 6-of-8 effort from beyond the arc. Wawasee countered by hitting 59 percent of its shots, and a 4-of-9 effort from three-point land. After trimming the lead to three points by the end of the third quarter, Wawasee finally took the lead, 42-41, with 6:09 to go when Alex Clark hit a layup down the right side of the lane. The lead was gone in seconds, as Northridge rushed down the floor and hit Christian Bach for a basket down low, and Wawasee never led again. Northridge extended the lead to 48-42 with three minutes left when Clark hit a couple of shots in the lane 18 seconds apart to trim the lead to two. After the Raiders’ Conner Utley hit a mid-range jumper, Clark was fouled and hit two free throws, giving him a game-high 23 for the night. Wawasee called time out with 53.3 seconds left. The Warriors allowed exactly 30 seconds to tick from the clock before David Rocha fouled Utley, who hit both ends of the one-and-one to extend the margin to 54-50. “They couldn’t hear us. We were yelling for the foul a lot earlier, but it was loud out there,” said Wawasee head coach Steve Wiktorowski. “You can put that on me; we weren’t able to communicate to them soon enough. But even then we still felt that with the score what it was we felt like we could get a quick three or two, either way. Even though it went down farther than we ideally would have liked, we had a chance.” Aaron Voirol and Gage Reinhard, finishing with 14 and six points respectively, missed three-pointers in the last 20 seconds. Wiktorowski talked to his team about the sometimes-thin margin between victory and defeat. “I thought we played hard tonight, and for the most part played pretty well,” he said. “We talked about sometimes the difference between winners and champions is those couple of little plays. I thought they made the big plays inside the (paint) that just killed us. A couple of baseline drives into their post, one or two loose balls, a loose rebound, that’s the difference right now. “Offensively, for the most part, we did some good things. We had decent first looks. It came down to two very even teams and it came down to one, two, or three plays in the lane that they were able to come up with.” Wawasee, now 7-9 overall and 0-6 in the NLC, has one more shot at winning a conference game this season. The Warriors go to Goshen Thursday for a 7:30 p.m. tipoff.
