Third Quarter Pivotal In Wawasee's Win Over Whitko
Posted
Mark Howe-mhowe@timesuniononline.com
LIGONIER – For 28 minutes, Wawasee and Whitko played a close sectional game at West Noble Tuesday night. The four minutes to start the second half, however, proved disasterous for the Wildcats in their 71-59 season-ending loss to the Warriors. Wawasee led 34-30 at halftime, and Whitko had the first possession in the third quarter. After working the ball around against the Warrior defense for 45 seconds, the Wildcats turned the ball over. They would do likewise on the next three trips down the floor, and Wawasee capitalized with an 8-0 run to start the period. Whitko turned the ball over just 12 times in the game, but... “Those four turnovers killed us. We didn’t even get a shot,” Whitko head coach Roger Fleetwood said. “We’re down four at half, and we’ve got the ball, so if we score we’re only down one or two, and then we feel better about ourselves. “But we make four quick turnovers, trying to do some things we shouldn’t do, and you have to give them credit, their defense made us do things we didn’t want to do.” Wawasee head coach Steve Wiktorowski said he expected a close game, knowing Whitko had improved since the teams last met on Dec. 13. “It went the way I thought it would. They came out and threw some junk defenses at us; the triangle-and-two, the box-and-one,” he said. “Those especially work well in tournaments when they can kind of make you a little bit tight. We knew that points were going to be a little more difficult to come by, because they were going to take at least one, if not two of our main scorers out. For us to come through and get three guys deep into double figures playing against those defenses, I was pretty happy. “The other thing is we knew we had greatly improved since we played them back in mid-December, and that they can shoot the ball. They’ve played some people tough. Watching them on film I told our kids ‘these kids can shoot from the outside.’ They had nothing to lose, especially there at the end, and it was maybe a little closer than some people thought it would be, but it was about how I thought it would go.” The game started off as a shootout between Wawasee’s Aaron Voirol and Whitko’s Nate Walpole. Each guard had nine points in the first quarter, and nearly matched the effort in the second period. Voirol finished with a team-high 23 points while Walpole tallied a game-high 29 points. Whitko pulled within seven points midway through the fourth quarter, but Wawasee made nine of 12 free throws in the final two minutes to wrap up its first sectional win since 2011. Whitko, finishing its season at 6-17, got 17 points from Cole Kessie, who fouled out in the final minute with a hard but clean foul as Warrior Jake Hutchinson was driving for a layup. Kessie was then given a technical foul for something he said. Wawasee had two other players in double figures, Gage Reinhard with 19 points and Alex Clark with 15. The Warriors will take a 12-11 record into Friday’s 6 p.m. semifinal matchup with Tippecanoe Valley. The Vikings drew a first-round bye and are coming off a 63-49 home win over the Warriors on Feb. 27.
