SYRACUSE — Evidence of what happens when the Wawasee boys basketball team isn’t hitting its three-pointers was presented Friday night in Syracuse. Hitting just 4 of 24 three-point attempts in the opening half, the Wawasee Warriors (3-3, 0-1 Northern Lakes Conference) fell behind 41-18 to the Warsaw Tigers at intermission. While the Warriors performed much better in the second half, making 10 of 25 treys, the Tigers (3-3, 1-0 NLC) were too much, getting the 90-70 NLC-opening win. “It’s a good way to start out the conference,” Warsaw coach Doug Ogle said. For the third-straight season, Wawasee is without senior Jacob Thompson because of a shoulder injury, but Friday night, the Tigers were also short-handed, as junior Jordan Stookey was serving a one-game suspension. Despite the loss of one of their top players, the Tigers jumped out to an 11-0 lead and never looked back. “We haven’t really gotten off to that good of a start yet, besides maybe Rochester – especially against their press,” Ogle said. “We handled the ball well and ended up with a lot of easy baskets.” Warsaw finished the game making 38 of 66 field goals (58 percent), with senior John Swanson helping that percentage greatly in the fourth quarter. Entering the final stanza with 12 points, Swanson netted 14 in the final eight minutes, making 6 of 8 shots, many of which were layups after the Tigers beat the Wawasee full-court press. Swanson finished the game with a career-high 26 points to go with 11 rebounds, while senior Jared Bloom netted 24 and senior Taylor Cone scored 16. “I’m real happy for John Swanson – to have a game like that,” Ogle said. “Both he and Bloom played well.” Even though his team shot poorly early on, that stat wasn’t Wawasee coach Phil Mishler’s biggest concern. “The biggest problem was the pace of the game,” he said. “We didn’t start like we finished it.” Scoring 52 second-half points, the Wawasee offense seemed to begin clicking after sophomore Gage Reinhard hit a trey with 4:45 remaining in the third quarter, which cut the Warsaw lead to 47-21. Counting that trey, Wawasee hit six-straight three-pointers. “As they get older and start to understand the game, they can get the momentum from each other, but they also have to know it doesn’t have to be like that,” Mishler said. “That’s just something we haven’t experienced yet. We’ve hit shots all the way through so far. This was the first time we started off cold. I think this was a good lesson. The best part was, they responded in the second half and didn’t stop shooting.” Following the loss, Mishler was actually pretty upbeat. “For us, it’s about getting better every day, every practice and every game,” Mishler said. “Today, we got a lot better. I mean, a lot better from the start to the end of the game. We can take that and learn from this.” Wawasee was led by sophomore Alex Clark’s 24 points, followed by senior Ryndan Aaron’s 19 and junior Chase Myers’ 12. Up next for Wawasee is another tough one, as the Warriors travel to 6-0 Columbia City Tuesday. “Not taking anything away from Warsaw, but (Columbia City) is a lot better,” Mishler said. “They have a good shot at getting down to state in the tournament. They’ve got great perimeter shooting, great penetrators, great big men and they have great coaching. It’s going to be awfully difficult for our guys, but we need to go in there and compete as hard as we did tonight.” The Tigers are also hitting the road Tuesday, heading west to take on Valparaiso University-bound Clay Yeo and the Triton Trojans. “He’s really good and they have other guys to go with him, including Tanner Shepherd,” Ogle said about the 6-foot-6 Yeo. “It’s at Triton and hopefully there’ll be a nice crowd.”
