Whitko’s Colin Craig congratulates his coach on win No. 500 following Whitko’s win over Wawasee Saturday night. (Photos by Nick Goralczyk)

SOUTH WHITLEY — It was a milestone night for Whitko boys basketball head coach Roger Fleetwood. When the final buzzer sounded after his team’s 66-49 over visiting Wawasee Fleetwood joined an elite class of coaches by earning his 500th career victory.

Fleetwood was presented with a trophy by Whitko athletic director Casey Stouffer after the game. A video message of congratulations from Lou Williams was also played in the gym following the game. Williams, the 2015 NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award recipient and current guard for Los Angeles Lakers, played under Fleetwood at South Gwinnett High School in Georgia. Fleetwood has coached varsity basketball in Indiana, Georgia and Florida.

Fleetwood was more than appreciative of the cheers, well-wishes and fanfare. It was a moment he may have been able to stay in forever, but there was still a regular post game routine to go through and the seasoned coach didn’t miss a beat.

“Wawasee really came out with a lot of enthusiasm to start the game,” Fleetwood said of his team’s opponent. “They were switching up defenses, which we felt like they would. We knew they were going to play Nate (Walpole) and River (West) real hard. That’s a broken record. It will continue to be a broken record for the rest of the season.

“We just really stuck to our guns tonight. I was really pleased with that we showed more patience tonight offensively. We got the ball to the open guy tonight. We weren’t making shots early, Nate kind of kept us in there until River and Devon (Adkins) scored some. I was especially happy with how we played in the second half. From about the midpoint in the third quarter to the end of the game we played really well.”

Whitko played excellent in the final two quarters, outscoring Wawasee 35-27 along the way. Whatever Wawasee tried to do to slow Whitko down in the fourth quarter simply did not work. The home team seemed to be hitting every shot and was breaking Wawasee’s press attempts late in the game. It was the game Whitko had been waiting for.

“This is a really good win for us,” Fleetwood stated. “Wawasee has a young team, an inexperienced team, they had a lot of seniors last year. That showed over 32 minutes. We had a lot of guys back and that showed too.”

The two teams played a very even game in the first half despite the Wildcats holding a 31-22 advantage at the break. Walpole made, perhaps, his best play of the first half by grabbing his own rebound and fighting through some Wawasee defenders to lay it in for two in the closing seconds of the second quarter.

Walpole finished his night with a game-high 27 points. West had 16 and Adkins added 12 for Whitko.

Wawasee struggled to get things going in the final two quarters despite pockets of good play from a variety of players. Offensively the Warriors were led by Jairus Boyer’s 14 points. Dalton Pearish was a great presence in the paint for the visiting squad as he tallied 11 points of his own.

The biggest mistake the Warriors made was getting into serious foul trouble early in the game. That prevented them from ever getting into their game plan and ultimately let Whitko build a lead.

“I thought we really struggled tonight to get into any kind of a rhythm because of our fouls,” said Wawasee head coach Steve Wiktorowski. “Overall I thought we played well defensively, we just have to learn how to play that type of defense without getting the fouls. They were legitimate fouls, we just have to get better at not committing them.

“We had some great play off the bench tonight with Jairus (Boyer) and Dalton (Pearish), both those guys did a great job. We did our best against Walpole defensively I think. He’s really hard to defend. He got some of our guys into foul trouble and later on he was playing selfless basketball, getting the ball to his teammates and they were hitting shots.

“It was obvious that team played all of last year together.”

Whitko moves to 4-2 on the season and will host Tippecanoe Valley next Friday. Wawasee falls to 1-4 and will travel to Warsaw on Friday.

Wawasee won the JV contest 49-27 to move to 5-0 on the season. Brian Collins Bennett Hoffert led Wawasee with nine points and eight points, respectively. Micah Cokl and Cody Swick each had six points for Whitko.