AKRON – NorthWood’s Braxton Linville hit a buzzer-beating trey to give the Panthers a nine-point halftime advantage. After host Tippecanoe Valley closed to within six, NorthWood used a 12-0 run in the last four minutes of the third quarter, keyed by Dakiyron Fox’s five buckets in the paint, to expand the Panther lead to 18. The run solidified NorthWood’s 71-44 win over the Vikings in the championship game of the Winning Edge Holiday Tournament Saturday night. The last-second trey was the Panthers’ second buzzer beater of the game, and both coaches agreed that the 1-2 punch was a key to the Panther title. “I felt we played pretty well in the first half, and I thought Braxton Linville’s three at the end of the (second) quarter was a good lift going into halftime,” said NorthWood head coach Aaron Wolfe. “I felt we were able to get into transition and get some easy baskets to start the third quarter, which separated the score.” Said Valley head coach Bill Patrick, “I thought we played well the first half. I thought we played about as well as we could play. It should have been four points at halftime. We made two big mental mistakes at the end of each quarter. In the first quarter, we had the ball, took a bad shot and they scored, and right before the half we had the basketball, we took a quick shot and they hit a three. So that’s five points if we had taken care of the ball, even if we didn’t score. If we’d have scored, it would have been less.” Linville, the tournament’s most valuable player, had 21 points in the first half and finished with 25 in the game. Fox scored 12 of his 16 points in the decisive third quarter, and all of his baskets were in the paint. The combination of a double-overtime game the night before and fighting the illness that seems to be going around the area might have been too much for the Vikings to overcome, according to Patrick. “We didn’t do a very good job on Linville; we didn’t have anybody that could contain him,” Patrick said. “That may be attributed to kids being sick this week; Littlejohn was sick and wasn’t at the shoot-around today, and was sick Wednesday and Thursday. Gavin Bussard was sick all night, and didn’t make it to shoot-around. (Neil) Clampitt was sick Wednesday and Thursday, and I think that caught up with us a little bit. “In the first half, the kids were more (emotionally) involved with it, but they were just better than we were tonight. We can play with them, I think. Hopefully by sectional we’ll be to that point. To beat them you have to be able to contain Linville and you gotta keep Fox off the boards, keep him from scoring. If you can do those two things, you can beat them. But that’s a pretty tough chore.” Wolfe noticed the change in Fox’s game from half to half. “I feel Dakiyron is improving,” Wolfe said. “I felt in the first half he was in a hurry in the basket area, but in the second half I thought he did a better job of taking his time in the basket area, which makes him hard to handle, because of his strength.” Having defeated potential sectional foes Fairfield and the Vikings on consecutive nights is good, according to Wolfe, but the experience of tournament play is more significant to him. “We try to play ‘next game,’ that’s the most important,’” Wolfe said. “Obviously with Fairfield and Tippecanoe Valley being in the sectional it’s important, but it’s more important that it’s a tournament. It gives you the Friday-Saturday atmosphere that, if you’re fortunate enough to maybe win a game in the sectional, that you’d have the experience of a big game and maybe having played the same opponents you’d see in the sectional.” Valley’s Alex Thacker followed his 35-point performance in Friday’s double-overtime win over Rochester with 21 points in the championship game. Chandler O’Connor tallied eight for the Vikings, with Bussard and Clampitt scoring six points each. Thacker was named to the all-tournament team, along with NorthWood’s Fox and Vincent Miranda, Fairfield’s Brock Goeglein and Joe Line, and Rochester’s Alec Holland. Fairfield won the consolation game over Rochester 74-48. Now 5-4 on the season, Valley returns to Three Rivers Conference play at 7:45 p.m. Friday when Northfield comes to town.
