Valley Fends Off County Rival WawaseeAKRON – Friday’s regular season finale turned out to be a winning celebration for the five seniors on Tippecanoe Valley’s boys basketball team.
It was one last chance for Jalen Shepherd, Parkur Dalrymple, Wes Melanson, Cameron Parker and Dwight Conley to play together on their home floor.
The Vikings didn’t want cross-county rival Wawasee to spoil their moment, and they made sure they didn’t.
After being down five points at the end of the first quarter, the Vikings would roar back and fend off the feisty Warriors 48-45.
Valley has won six of its last seven games and will take some momentum into next week’s Class 3A sectional at Wawasee High School.
Shepherd led all scorers with 21 points and grabbed five rebounds in the victory for Valley (13-9). His performance is also a season-high.
Parker chipped in with 10 points, and Tanner Trippiedi and Melanson scored five points each.
Junior forward Ethan Hardy finished with 15 points and was 5 of 5 from the field and 5 of 7 from the charity stripe for Wawasee (5-16). Freshman guard Keaton Dukes finished with 12 points and three boards in the loss, while junior guards Austin Miller and Aaron Evans scored nine and seven points, respectively.
Wawasee held a 16-11 lead at the end of the first quarter, with Hardy scoring the team’s first seven points.
“We started off slow, we tried to play man defense and (Wawasee) played that slow, methodical offense, and we got caught on some backdoors, and all things we worked on, and we weren’t really in it,” said Valley coach Chad Patrick.
“We made a couple lineup changes and went to the trap in the second quarter and they were not ready for it.”
Despite the early jump, things unraveled in the second quarter, as Valley outscored their opponents 19-7 and took a 30-23 lead at the intermission.
Wawasee outscored Valley 22-18 in the second half, and came up just short.
“We had some walls here and there, which we will do and continue to,” said Patrick. “But I liked the way that we finished the game. We did not take any crazy bad shots in the last three or four minutes, we handled the ball well, and we hit our free throws. It was a way to finish the game.”
Before Friday night’s game, Valley had a chance at claiming a share of the TRC title, but Wabash took care of business and defeated the Peru Tigers 66-43 to claim their first outright conference title.
Both Valley and Wawasee received the first-round bye for the sectional and will wait to see who they face Friday night. Should both teams win their semifinal games, they will have a rematch to decide who claims the sectional championship.
Valley will await the Game 1 winner between Fairfield and NorthWood, while Wawasee gets the winner of Game 2 between West Noble and Lakeland.
With much anticipation and excitement for the tournament to start, Patrick believes the championship is free for the taking.
“It’s wide open. I could make a case for all six teams in it,” Patrick said.
