Shooting Woes Lead To Warsaw LossWhile rain fell outside Friday night, inside the Tiger Den Warsaw’s varsity boys basketball team went through a bit of a drought. Hosting the Carroll Chargers in the regular-season finale for both teams, the Tigers were just 15 of 42 from the field overall and 5 of 21 from three-point range. Warsaw’s shooting woes led to a 44-39 loss, and the Tigers will take a three-game losing streak into next week’s Class 4A sectional at North Side Gym in Elkhart. “It would have been nice to go out on senior night and for us to shoot better and play better, but we didn’t,” said Warsaw coach Doug Ogle, whose team fell to 14-9. “That doesn’t change things.?I don’t think that our players are fragile emotionally. I think they understand that if we were playing lesser opponents we could be winning these games, but what does that prove? “The fact that we’ve lost these last three games, you have to factor in who we’re playing, and I don’t think our players will be down going into the Northridge game.” The Tigers will face Northridge in postseason play Wednesday at approximately 7:30 p.m. The sectional gets underway Tuesday with Concord and Goshen. Elkhart Central and Penn play at 6 p.m. Wednesday. In the five-point loss to Carroll, Warsaw trailed 17-7 in the first quarter after using a different starting lineup for senior night. The Tigers rallied, however, and went on a 23-9 run that gave them a 30-26 advantage late in the third quarter. Clinging to a 39-38 lead, the Chargers scored the last five points of the game and improved to 12-9 on the season. “It’s a difficult place to play,” Carroll coach Marty Beasley said of the Tiger Den. “We’ve been fortunate to get some wins over them the last few years, they’ve all come down to the wire. We talked to the kids about being mentally tough and that we’re not going to get a call ... you have to play through that stuff. You have to keep working to get what you can get.” Carroll has won four of the last six meetings with the Tigers. Those six games have been decided by a total of 17 points, with Friday’s five-point margin being the largest. The Chargers finished the game 14 of 36 from the field overall, 5 of 21 from three-point range, and 11 of 12 at the free throw line. Junior Riley Perlich led Carroll with a game-high 16 points, making 5 of 7 attempts from the field and all five of his charity tosses. Classmate Nathan Fish scored eight points in the win, while sophomore Daniel McKeeman chipped in with six and senior Jacob Redding and junior Arius Jones finished with five each. “He was Mr. Steady Eddy,” Beasley said of Perlich. “He doesn’t wow you, he’s not the most athletic kid on the floor, but he shoots it well, he’s a strong kid, he plays his role really well for us, and he doesn’t get wowed by the moment. He’s always the same speed all the time. He doesn’t get sped up. He made a lot of good plays for us tonight.” For Warsaw, senior Kyle Mangas led the way with 10 points, while classmate Braxton Minix scored eight points, and senior Jeremy David and junior Asher Blum finished with six points each. Junior Jack Rhoades scored five points in the loss. Mangas entered Friday’s game on a streak of 13 straight games where he scored at least 20 points. Against Carroll he struggled to find his shooting touch. Shots that normally drop for him didn’t, and the Indiana Wesleyan University recruit finished the game 4 of 17 from the field overall and 1 of 7 from the arc. “We’re not going to beat a good team if he shoots like that,” said Ogle. “I am encouraged by his five assists to just one turnover. “That’s an aberration. Kyle is human. He’s allowed to have an off night here and there, and it’s good that he had it tonight and got it out of his system, because as we know this is an outlier.”
