Tippecanoe Valley’s Addy Miller goes on the attack while Triton’s Alyxa Viers (44) and Delanie Groves defend during a game in Bourbon Wednesday night. (Photos by James Costello)

BOURBON — When Tippecanoe Valley’s girls basketball team has needed a little kickstart to games, the full court press has become head coach Chris Kindig’s preferred method for giving the Lady Vikings one.

Kindig knew from scouting host Triton prior to tip-off of Wednesday night’s game at the Trojan Trench that the press could yield results, and he knew from experience that it would give his team an emotional spark.

It did both as the ICGSA 3A, fourth-ranked Vikings jumped out to a 13-2 start as part of a 23-7 first half, then cruised to their sixth straight win, 44-25 in Bourbon.

“This team, it seems like if we press early it kind of gets them going a little bit. It raises the intensity level,” explained Kindig. “I thought that got us the lead early there in the first quarter. Looking at film I thought maybe we could press them a little bit, and I thought that was successful. We’ll continue to work on it.”

Olivia Trippiedi, left, and Emily Peterson, right, pinch Triton’s Whytnie Miller as she drives the ball on the perimeter.

The Trojans surrendered seven turnovers over the first period alone and scuffled to 1 of 10 shooting in the opening stanza as Valley (9-1) jumped out to an 11-2 advantage at the quarter break Wednesday. The hosts gave up a total of 12 turnovers over the first half — which the Vikings converted into 11 points — and knocked down just 3 of 17 shots in that span while Valley built itself a comfortable, 16-point cushion headed into the break. Triton (5-7) picked it up in the second half, but it was already too late as the Trojans suffered a second straight loss at home.

“I think the first four minutes we had four turnovers. A turnover every possession or every minute is going to hurt us,” said Triton coach Adam Heckaman. “We started off real slow taking care of the ball — didn’t make good decisions, didn’t make good passes, and Valley outworked us.”

While Valley’s stingy defense limited Triton to 9-of-35 (25.7 percent) shooting Wednesday, the Vikings converted at a 17-of-38 (45 percent) clip from the floor, helped by 11 assists, including some heads-up interior passing. Sophie Bussard put up 12 points to go with four assists, while Addy Miller knocked down four 3s on her way to a game-high 14 points. Sophomore guard Jillian Walls notched nine with an assist and two steals in nearly 20 minutes of varsity work for the Vikings, meanwhile.

“I thought since the summer she could help us offensively. I wasn’t sure she could guard at the varsity level, and I think she’s proven she can do that,” Kindig said of Walls. “So I think if you combine that together, she’s playing extremely well, and we’ve been trying to find that seven, eight player, and she’s filled the bill for us. She comes out and shoots with confidence, too. It started out she played well on the JV and has really started contributing on the varsity level.”

Triton got the bulk of its scoring from Hannah Wanemacher with 11 points, but Valley’s defense hounded her into 3-of-15 shooting at the game while giving away just three trips to the foul line. Whytnie Miller got rolling late to provide five of her six points as the Trojans won the fourth quarter, 10-7, and Nicole Sechrist chipped in all four of her points patrolling the paint in the second half.

“She’s capable. She has to,” said Heckaman of Miller’s fourth-period performance. “You look out on the floor, we don’t have a lot of kids scoring the ball. Hannah is our shooter, but we can’t rely on her every night to make every shot she shoots and right now no one else seems to be looking to score. Nikki did some good things down in the post so maybe it’s something we start to look at and try to get her off of the perimeter and just try to get back to more pound it down low and work inside-out, let Whytnie drive some more for kick-outs and some things like that. Offensively we’ve just got to look at the basket, and right now we just look along the perimeter to pass it.”

Nicole Sechrist works inside while Emily Peterson and Addy Miller, left, defend.

The silver lining for Triton was a second half that saw the Trojans mostly keep pace with their Valley counterparts, 21-18. The home team cut its turnovers down by more than half after the break, and when they did turn the ball over, the Trojans got back on defense to prevent easy fast break buckets by the Vikings. It was something to build on headed into Saturday’s Hoosier North Athletic Conference home game with Caston.

“We talked about it at the beginning of the game, if we’re going to do something with the dribble we’ve got to look to attack, and we didn’t do that in the first half. We dribbled and picked it up, and if we keep doing that we get ourselves in trouble. We have nowhere to pass, and we turn the ball over,” Heckaman said. “We cut our turnovers down in the second half because people cut to the spots they needed to a little harder, we put something on our passes and then we looked to attack the basket.”

The Vikings now get ready for a Three Rivers Conference game at North Miami Friday, and they should have plenty of momentum with Wednesday’s third straight road win and sixth straight overall. Kindig believes they’ll need it as they look to stay perfect in the TRC against a formidable Warriors front court.

“Obviously North Miami has a lot of size, so we’re not going to be able to allow them to do what they want inside. They’ve got three girls that are close to 6 foot, one that I think is 6’3”, 6’4” so we’re going to have a challenge,” he said.

“This is probably as big of a conference game that we’ve had in awhile in terms of what we’re going to be facing. We’re going to have to play well.”

Valley’s JV also won their game, 33-26. Sidney Wagner put up 11 points, and Walls scored nine in that contest. Triton’s JV was led by Alyxa Viers’ 10.