Wawasee Basketball: Lady Warriors Make A Statement
SOUTH WHITLEY – After a statement win on Saturday, Wawasee girls basketball head coach Matt Carpenter wanted to see his team respond a little further. That response came from his team in the form of a 44-33 win at Whitko Tuesday night.
After a ten-point win at Elkhart Memorial over the weekend, Wawasee played its sixth straight road game and had a fight on its hands with a scrappy Wildcat team looking for its own statement.
Whitko found itself down quickly, only to fight back to make it an eight-point game in the fourth before Wawasee made a key sequence to pull away.
Led by the grindy play of guard Emmalee Duggins, in just her third game back from an injury that kept her out of Whitko’s first 15 contests, Whitko found itself down just 36-28 following a Duggins basket with 4:39 to play. But Carpenter saw his team respond in a big way when Casey Schroeder carved right through the Whitko lane to get the hoop and the harm. Schroeder missed the freebie, but Hannah-Marie Lamle grabbed the offensive rebound and made the putback to push Wawasee up 12.
Whitko wouldn’t cut the lead into single digits the rest of the way.
“Being able to beat Memorial on Saturday was a nice confidence boost for us,” noted Carpenter. “What I told our kids before the game, if that was our pinnacle, if we are done after we beat Memorial, then I don’t know what to do to help them out. That just needs to be a stepping stone and I wanted to see improvement tonight. It wasn’t as smooth, but we did improve by not turning the ball over as much. We did battle through some adversity and tried some new things. We still grew tonight.”
It wasn’t a clean game by any stretch of the imagination, with Wawasee and Whitko combining to commit over 30 turnovers in the game. Five Whitko turnovers in the game’s open allowed Wawasee to jump out to a 11-3 lead, and a pair of Whitko giveaways late in the second quarter helped Wawasee take a 24-10 lead.
“We didn’t play very well, but I do want to make sure they get the just due they deserve,” Carpenter said. “They are a much better team with Duggins in the lineup and it showed when she was on the court tonight.”
Duggins would lead Whitko with 14 points and Taylor Reiff added 10 points.
Schroeder led Wawasee with 14 points and added seven steals, and Lamle tossed in 12 points and five rebounds. Caitlin Wortinger and Kabrea Rostochak combined for 13 points, 12 rebounds and six steals and were a presence on the inside defending Whitko’s Ellie Snep. The junior forward was averaging almost 11 points and 16 rebounds per contest, and while she grabbed 16 boards on the night, was held to four points.
“We obviously have some offensive deficiencies in that we are not really good shooters and also the turnover issues,” said Whitko head coach Rick Bragg. “We obviously are much better with the Duggins girl playing for us. We are at the point now where we can beat a press, but the press effectively does what it wants to against us because we don’t have a concept of how to start an offense. Part of that tonight is a credit to Wawasee, their man-to-man defense was pretty good.”
Wawasee moves to 10-9 on the season with its final home game of the campaign Saturday against Plymouth. Whitko sits at 2-17 with its next game Saturday at home against Northfield.
In the junior varsity contest, Wawasee came away with a 32-23 win. Seven Lady Warriors scored, McKenzie Smith and Ella Beezley each totaling six points. Carissa Beck paced Whitko with 10 points.