SYRACUSE — It’s been a rough season for the Wawasee Warriors, and things didn’t lighten up with their sectional draw. Although the Warriors (4-16) host Class 3A Sectional 21 this year, they did draw the defending champion Tippecanoe Valley Vikings (16-3) in an opening-round game to be played Wednesday at 6 p.m.. In the final game of the regular season Friday night, the two teams met in a sectional preview, with the Vikings prevailing 58-46. This year will mark the third time in the past four seasons that Valley and Wawasee have met in the first round of the sectional after closing out the regular season against each other. “I think there’s more drawbacks to it than there are positives,” first-year Wawasee coach Steve Wiktorowski said of the back-to-back games against Valley. “We haven’t had any talks with them, but maybe it’s time we got that game moved to a different date, so we can treat it more like a normal game,” he added. Instead of playing it like a normal game, Wiktorowski sees each team approaching the regular-season finale a manner in which neither is showing its complete hand. “The biggest drawback to that is that you want to win, but you don’t want to show too much,” he said. “So, you feel like you’re a little bit hamstrung, in that you don’t want to play your very last game going into the sectional in a normal manner.” Regardless of whether or not the two played each other five days earlier, the Warriors would still be underdogs to the Vikings. “They’re one of the favorites for the sectional (title), because of their experience and they’re very well-balanced,” Wiktorowski said. “They have some guards that can shoot. They have some bigs that can go both inside and outside. They’re physical. They have good size and they’re well-coached. I saw them play a few weeks ago, and they’re very confident.” Valley enters the sectional as winners of 12 of its last 13 games and has one of the top players in the sectional with 2013-14 Times-Union Area Player of the Year Tanner Andrews. At 6-foot-3, the senior is one inch taller than Wawasee’s tallest regular, junior Stori Bright, but the Vikings also have 6-foot-5 post player Logan Britton and 6-foot-5 shooting forward Chainey Zolman. Despite the odds, Wiktorowski believes in the fight of his squad, which features only one senior. “I feel we’ve come a long way and we have a ‘nothing to lose’ mentality,” he said. “We’re just going to go out there and do our best. Hopefully, we can defend well and get some offense going.” Averaging 46 points this year, Wawasee’s top offensive threat is junior Alex Clark, who’s averaged 12.9 points per game, followed by junior Gage Reinhard’s 10.6 and Bright’s 6.9. Three years ago, Wawasee was using a run-and-gun offense that averaged 71 points per game, but that number dropped to 60 two years ago, then 51 last year. Under Wiktorowski, the Wawasee offense has had a facelift, moving to a half-court strategy, and Wiktorowski knew the change would feature some bumps in the road. “I was expecting it would take the whole season for us to really make the kind of progress that I wanted to,” he said. “That’s pretty much been the case. One of the main reasons for that is we play a very difficult schedule. Most of the teams on our schedule are bigger than ours and we play in a very difficult conference. Then, the weather has been a tremendous factor in us just not being able to practice regularly and work things to develop the team. Instead, we’ve just been preparing for the next game.” The losses have been hard to come by, but Wiktorowski hasn’t noticed any dissension on the team. “The thing I’ve loved about this team is the very positive attitudes they’ve had,” he said. “They’ve always bounced back. I don’t think there’s a team we’ve lost to this year that I’ve sat there and said, ‘We were physically better than they were. Why did we lose to them?’ They’ve done a great job of being ready every game. They’ve been incredibly coachable. I love these kids and can’t ask for any more than they’ve given us. I just hope they get confidence from all the experiences they’ve had this year and just go out and play the kind of basketball I think we still have in us.”
