SYRACUSE – Most coaches would rather not face a tean at the end of the regular season, and then again in the sectional opener. For Wawasee, that’s especially true. Tippecanoe Valley, the host school for Sectional 21 and the fourth-ranked team in Class 3A, played very well last week against Wawasee. The Lady Vikings had a 50-point first half and cruised to a 72-38 win. Valley made a postseason run that ended in last spring’s state finals, and the Lady Vikings are 21-1 so far this season. “I don’t know if, in the years I’ve seen Tippecanoe Valley, that they’ve ever played that well,” Wawasee head coach Kem Zolman said. “I mean, they were smokin’. They hit 63 percent of their shots, and most of those were layups. Our focus was to stop their transition. Instead, we turned the ball over a bunch of times. “You could tell by the look on our kids’ faces; ‘this is not good.’ We just ran into a buzzsaw.” Count Zolman among those who’d rather not play a team twice in a week, especially when the second is the higher stakes game. “We had a game plan, but it was pretty vanilla. And I’m sure they were the same. You just don’t want to show too much in that first game. I joked with the kids in the locker room at halftime; ‘geez, I know I said we don’t want to show them much, but I didn’t mean it like that.” As has been the case for a couple of seasons now, Wawasee is led by senior Kylee Rostochak. She averages just over 14 points a game, with seven of her Lady Warriors teammates averaging between 2.7 and 6.7 points a contest. Rostochak, Aubrey Kuhn and Erin Wiktorowski are the primary three-point threats. Schmeltz, a junior, and sophomore Hannah-Marie Lamle handle most of the rebounding for Wawasee, averaging six and five boards per game, respectively. They are also important to the Wawasee offense; if they can get open underneath it takes a lot of the attention off Rostochak. Ball security is critical to the Lady Warriors, who turn the ball over more than 16 times per game, though they force 17 turnovers every time they take the floor. But above all else, Zolman said keeping the score close against the Lady Vikings will create a sense of pressure for Tippecanoe Valley that no defense can. “It’s very important we hang in there, because the weight (of the situation) becomes theirs,” he said. They’re the defending champs, they’re the ones everyone is expecting to win, they’re the ones that are concerned if they don’t win by 30 when they should have, and all that garbage that parents and fans alike get all excited about. “But we have nothing to lose. People expect us to lose, so the longer we can hang around, the better it is for us. And that will be the case for every game we play in the sectional. We can play relaxed knowing we’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.” For everything Wawasee has been through in an 8-14 season, it all comes down to the mental side of the game of basketball and the ability to make a shot when they need to stop a run. The cliche says the postseason gives everyone new life; everyone starts off 0-0, and in the Lady Warriors’ case, the fresh start can be as renewing as opening the windows in a house after a long winter. “It’s been a year where it’s been very frustrating. We know what our deficiencies are, the kids know what they are, and when (adverse situations) start to happen, we just have to have that mental toughness to get through it. And that’s been a chore,” Zolman said. “I think a breath of fresh air will be good. We’ve learned a lot, and gaining confidence is important as you go into that thing (sectional). The first game is always very difficult, in any sectional you play. We’ll go at it with new guns and see what happens.” Wawasee and Tippecanoe Valley tip off at 6 p.m. Tuesday, with the winner taking on West Noble in the first semifinal Friday. Lakeland and NorthWood play in the late game Tuesday, with the winner taking on Fairfield in the second semifinal. The championship game is set for 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
