Tippecanoe Valley’s Jalen Shepherd (22), Jace Potter (40) and Manchester’s Mason Hamby (11) and Konrad Borgmann all battle for a rebound during the second half of a game in Akron Friday. (Photos by James Costello)

AKRON — Groundhog Day may still be a week away, but on Friday night Tippecanoe Valley head coach Chad Patrick already felt trapped in the same, bad scenario.

The Vikings lost their seventh straight and fell to 0-4 in the Three Rivers Conference via a 63-42 decision to visiting Manchester, but to make matters worse, Patrick wasn’t pleased with many of his players’ effort in the lopsided loss. And if he can’t get the outcome to change pretty soon, he may have to make some other changes, he says, because that same old plot line is getting old.

“We’ve told them whatever they put into the game is what they’re going to get out of it. There’ s a few of them that just aren’t putting in what I feel they need to, but there’s some underclassmen that are so we’re going to give them an opportunity here if things don’t change in a hurry because this is the same old thing over and over again. I’m not very good at that,” said a frustrated Patrick after the game.

The Vikings (2-12, 0-4 TRC) scuffled to a 17-of-45 shooting clip in Friday’s loss, much of that due to a woeful 0-of-11 mark from deep. In addition to just settling for the outside shot, Patrick chalked up the home team’s inability to knock down those 3-point attempts to an inability to work inside-out. Valley did show some improvement in its penetration late in the second half and finished the night with 30 points in the paint, but it was already too late to make up the Vikings’ deep deficits against a Manchester squad that converted 7 of 15 3-pointers and nearly 42 percent from the floor in general.

Tanner Trippiedi pulls up for a shot over Manchester’s Koehl Fluke while Manchester’s Brayden Casper and Valley’s Wes Melanson look on.

“We didn’t shoot that well. We’ve been struggling to say the least,” said Patrick. “Thirty-seven percent is not going to win that many basketball games. Our guys are shooting shots quick. If we can just get it inside and let the inside-out game happen and get better 3s, I think they’ll start knocking them down. But we get those sideways passes and just jack it up really quick. If everything is going that’s fine, but when it’s not you’ve got to find a good 3 — that inside-out, stepping into it, knock it down with some confidence. Or even forget about the 3-point line and step in and hit an 18-footer, 17-footer and then go back out. Those are all things we work on, but a lot of the things that we work on in practice tend to, when we get in the game sometimes they get frustrated, and I do too but we’ve got to stay with the game plan.”

The Squires (7-7, 3-2 TRC) got a trio of double-digit performances and one near double-double on the way to their third straight win.

Brothers Weston and Mason Hamby — a freshman and a senior, respectively — tallied 13 and 18 points and a combined three assists in the win, while senior guard Koehl Fluke finished with 15 points for Manchester. Junior Brayden Casper scored nine points with 11 rebounds in a balanced performance by the Squires, who have won five of their last six and are 7-2 in their last nine games since an 0-5 start to the season.

Manchester took its first double-digit lead of the night with eight unanswered points at the end of the first period for a 19-8 advantage at the quarter break. That spurt was part of a larger 17-2 run that pushed the visitors out to a 15-point cushion with a full 3:23 remaining in the first half.

“I think as a team this year we have had good runs. If we can get to the point where we’re putting that together for an extended period of time — we all preach for a full 32 minutes, but I’d take 30 minutes of that kind of play — if we can get to that point I think we’re going to be pretty good,” said Manchester coach Mark Underwood of his team’s first-half run. “During that stretch, I think that we played with a lot of energy and a lot of togetherness and enthusiasm, and when we do that I think we’re at our best.”

The Vikings whittled Manchester’s lead back down to 11 with a Jalen Shepherd lay-in off a Tanner Trippiedi lob at the 4:02 stop of the third period, but that was as close as they ever got. Shepherd finished the night with team-highs of 12 points and eight rebounds as the third man off the bench for Valley after what may be his last junior JV outing earlier Friday.

“He’s been working really, really hard,” said Patrick of Shepherd. “He hasn’t played the last two years so he really doesn’t know the game that well. We put him down on JV, and his confidence has just bloomed. He’s playing really hard. He still is a little bit behind on the game sometimes, but his effort makes up for it. That’s what I try to tell some of these other kids — there are four or five kids on this team that are better than him, but they don’t go as hard as him and that effort will trump ability all day long when you go as hard as he does. Yeah, he’s probably done playing JV. That kids loves to play basketball, and he works really hard so we’re going to give him his shot.”

Parkur Dalrymple jump stops in the paint while Mason Hamby sticks to him.

Sophomore Jace Potter also gave his team a boost off the bench with eight points, four rebounds and an assist. Trippiedi finished with eight points, three assists and two steals in nearly 25 and a half minutes of steady play for the Vikings, who will look to rebound quickly at Clinton Christian tonight.

“I was pretty hard in there after the game because I just didn’t like the way a couple of their attitudes were and the way a couple of them reacted. We’re getting towards the end of the year, and we obviously aren’t winning so I’m going to find some kids that want to play and do what we’re asking them to do,” Patrick said. “There was two or three tonight that I didn’t feel did that, so they’ll have a chance tomorrow night to prove themselves again and if not we’ll start making some pretty serious changes because there are some kids on the JV that are playing really hard.”

Manchester will look for its third win of the week when it returns home to host Fort Wayne Concordia tonight in a busy week Underwood is using as sectional prep.

“We’re kind of looking at this week as a practice week for sectional. We played Tuesday against Belmont, we played tonight here, and now tomorrow we play Fort Wayne Concordia. Even though their record doesn’t look that great, they may be the best of the three opponents that we’ve had here, and that’s what happens in a sectional usually — on championship nights you’ve got to play the best team,” he said.

Valley’s junior varsity also lost its game Friday, 46-31. Jayden Conley scored 17 to lead the JV Vikings. Caleb Stout scored 11, and Isaiah Davis finished with 10 for the JV Squires.

Manchester’s Mason Hamby and Kamdyn Lester move to trap Valley’s Alex Morrison in the first half.