SYRACUSE – Thanks to a quartet of Northridge three-pointers, Wawasee fell into a hole in the first quarter that the Lady Warriors couldn’t quite get out of Tuesday night in the Hardwood Tepee. The home team trailed by eight points after the opening frame, closed to within four, and fell behind by 12 in the second half before cutting the lead to four with a minute to go. From there, Northridge hit its free throws, broke a press for an easy basket and sealed a 53-43 win in the Northern Lakes Conference opener for both teams. The Lady Raiders started the game out white-hot, hitting seven of their first eight shots and 8 of 11 in the first quarter overall. Sophomore Brooke McKinley and senior Baleigh Carithers hit a pair of shots each from beyond the arc and outscored Wawasee by themselves in the opening eight minutes. They finished the game with 12 points each. Northridge cooled considerably, and Wawasee showed it wasn’t going to just go away. The Lady Warriors implemented a three-quarter court press to pick up the tempo and make the visitors work harder for their shots. “The kids did that,” Wawasee head coach Kem Zolman said. “We had to; they hit their first three or four threes, and we just lost them within our matchups. They did that on their own. They’re a really gritty team. If we’re going to do that, it makes Rocky’s (assistant coach Goshert) job harder. We have to switch them out quicker and keep ‘em fresh. “But they felt like they could pick up the tempo a little bit for themselves, and when they feel that way, you gotta go with it.” Wawasee also made a strong effort to drive the ball to the basket, and got shots in the paint. The shots just wouldn’t fall for the Lady Warriors, who made just 31 percent of their shots. The good news for the Lady Warriors is the interior ball movement came with minimal turnovers and opened up shots from beyond the arc, where they made 4 of 10. When Carithers hit another three-pointer with 5:17 left in the game, Northridge had a 46-34 lead. Wawasee got a trey from Aubrey Kuhn, a jumper in the paint from Kylee Rostochak and another three from Erin Wiktorowski to close the gap to four with 1:45 remaining. The Lady Raiders chose to run down the clock, and while conventional wisdom dictates fouling in that situation, Wawasee patiently played defense and forced an over-and-back with 1:07 remaining. While Wawasee had just 12 turnovers in the game, two came in the final minute, allowing Northridge to salt away the win. Still, Zolman said he was pleased with the way his team competed, fighting back rather than allowing Northridge to blow them out. “Overall, we’re getting closer,” he said. “There’s a lot of positives we can gain from this. Unfortunately, in our society you only see the win and loss columns. But the effort and where we were at toward the end of the game makes it more tolerable. “We got 43 points against one of the better defending teams in the conference, so I was pleased with that. I was pleased with the way we hit the basket. I’ve been telling people all along, ‘we can hit the basket. We just haven’t shown it yet.’ “It was good to see we didn’t have 150,000 turnovers in the game, we only had 12 tonight. We were in the 20s for several games there. To have less turnovers than our opponent was really nice to see. “And we put ourselves in position at the end. We had a minute to go, down four, and our ball. Then we proceeded to make a couple of turnovers. That’s us. That’s what we’ve gotta get rid of. Now we need to figure out how to close games. And that’s something we’ll continue to work on. Thank heavens it’s not February yet. Hopefully by February we can have those issues taken care of and know how to finish a game.” Rostochak finished with a game-high 16 points and Kuhn added seven for Wawasee. Wiktorowski hit a pair of three-point shots for her six points. Zolman said he thinks the two best teams in the NLC are Northridge and Goshen. The Lady Warriors travel to Goshen for a 7:30 p.m. contest Friday.
