Wawasee

BY JEFF HOLSINGER, Times-Union Sports Writer

SYRACUSE - Welcome to Brick City, USA, baby.

Surely television announcer Dick Vitale would have said something like that had he witnessed Saturday's game between South Bend Riley and Wawasee. Wawasee hit 10 field goals - the whole game - and lost 47-36.

How ugly was it?

Let us count thy ways:

Wawasee's line at the end of the first quarter: 0 of 10 from the field, two points.

Wawasee's line at the end of the first half: 3 of 16 from the field, 12 points.

The Warriors put themselves in a 15-2 hole the first quarter, a hole they would never climb out of.

Wawasee's leading scorers, guards Jared Mahnensmith and Jay Haugh, combined for zero field goals in the game.

Wawasee's first field goal came with 6:33 to go - in the second quarter.

Normally teams can put one scoring run together, but Wawasee struggled to do that. Wawasee's best scoring spurt came near the end, when the Warriors trailed 45-28. They scored eight points in the final two minutes.

Riley started a big lineup - 6-foot-7 center Ronald Dokes and 6-6 Steve Reynolds at forward. Points inside came few and far between for the Warriors.

Riley coach Tom DeBaets had seen Wawasee before, and he believed the biggest key to winning was to stop dribble penetration by Haugh and Mahnensmith.

His team did that.

"We were able to stop their guards," DeBaets said. "We were very concerned about their guard play. We stopped their penetration and made sure we got a hand in the shooters' faces.

"We thought we could handle them inside, but it was their guards we were worried about."

By taking away Wawasee's dribble penetration, the Wildcats forced the Warriors to become a perimeter jump-shooting team.

Those jump shots didn't always fall.

Wawasee finished the game 10 of 33 (30 percent) from the field, including 0 of 9 behind the three-point line.

"If the ball doesn't go down for you, you're not going to win many games," Wawasee coach Jerry Davis said. "You don't score more points than we scored tonight, you're not going to win many games.

"We had some shots that didn't go down. We were on two forever. We didn't shoot free throws well - we shot 6 of 12 the first half. We didn't hit a three-pointer all night long. We're going to have nights like that. Once we got rattled a little, we didn't respond.

"We didn't look to pound the ball inside enough. When your perimeter shots aren't going down, you need to find other ways to score."

But the Warriors didn't, and they paid with a loss to Riley, which has won three in a row to improve to 3-3.

Wawasee, 1-5, competes in the Goshen Holiday Tournament on Dec. 29-30.

"We gotta keep our chin up," Davis said. "We've played some pretty good basketball teams. You think about South Bend Riley and DeKalb and Warsaw and Elkhart Central. Those are pretty solid basketball teams."