SYRACUSE — It hasn’t been the best season for the Wawasee girls basketball team, but it did get fortunate in the Class 3A Sectional 21 draw. Playing the sectional on their home floor, the 5-15 Wawasee Lady Warriors drew the Lakeland Lady Lakers (5-15) in the opening game, which will be Tuesday at 6 p.m. Wawasee, the defending Sectional 21 champions, defeated Lakeland 66-25 on Nov. 15 in Syracuse, and with a win, Wawasee would move on to play West Noble (12-8), a squad it fell to 63-59 on Dec. 13 in Ligonier, Friday at 6 p.m. But despite having defeated one opponent and having only lost by four to the other, Wawasee coach Kem Zolman is playing the waiting game before declaring it a good draw. “A good draw is always one you win,” Zolman said. “If you win, it’s a good draw. If you lose, it’s a horrible one.” While the the top half of the bracket features teams with a combined record of 22-38, the bottom half is 49-13, with Fairfield (15-5) and Tippecanoe Valley (15-5) playing Tuesday after the Wawasee/Lakeland game. The winner of that game, moves on to play No. 4 NorthWood (19-3) in the semifinal. “They can beat each other up,” Zolman said about the bottom half of the bracket. “NorthWood probably has the advantage, but even (NorthWood coach Steve Neff) would say there’s no way of telling how games will go. The game after us, with Tippecanoe Valley and Fairfield should be a good one too.” After getting the season started at 3-1, good games have been few-and-far-between for the Lady Warriors, who’ve gone 2-14 since that start. That good start did involve the blowout win over Lakeland, but Zolman isn’t putting too much stock in that outcome. “A lot has happened since then, and it’s not all been good for us,” Zolman said. While that game was a win for Wawasee, the Lady Warriors, which feature just one senior, had plenty of games in front of them. This time, a loss ends the season. And it’s that finality that Zolman hopes his girls realize. “They need to play with a sense of urgency,” Zolman said. And Zolman hopes to see that urgency on defense “It all begins on the defensive end,” he said. “We’re trying to get the girls to understand that at the defensive end, it’s about working hard.” While there’s been a few more losses than he’d like to see this season, Zolman’s actually seen some improvements the last few games, including a 59-49 win at Concord on Jan. 28 and a 59-55 home loss to Bremen Tuesday. “In those games, there was finally a sense of urgency and aggressiveness on the defensive end,” Zolman said. Averaging 45 points a game this season, defense has to be stressed, especially when junior KiLee Knafel is the team’s lone scoring threat, averaging 25 of those points a game. “It doesn’t seem to bother her,” Zolman said about Knafel, the 2010-11 Times-Union All-Area Player of the Year. “(A scorer) is what she is, and recently she’s been able to produce for other and make others better.” Along with her point production, Knafel is also averaging 8.4 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 2.0 steals per game. Knafel has shown she can score when need be, but in the sectional, it will take more than one girl to get far. Fellow junior Kiley Cooper could be that second option for Wawasee, as the 6-foot-2 post player is averaging 6.1 points and 6.5 rebounds a game. “It’s a mindset and approach for Cooper,” Zolman said. “She needs to come out with a competitive, aggressive mindset.” And that assessment can go with the rest of the girls, but playing on their home court can definitely prove to be an asset. “It’s definitely better to play at home instead of going on the road two or three times, if you win it all,” Zolman said. “It’s always better to get into bed at a reasonable hour.”
