Carroll Charges Past Warsaw In Second HalfOn Warsaw’s senior night, it was a senior from Carroll High School that led his team to victory in Friday’s boys basketball regular season finale.
With a large crowd on hand to honor Warsaw seniors Nolan Groninger, Tyler Metzinger, Jaylen Reese and Trevor Rumple, 5-foot-11 Daniel McKeeman scored a game-high 20 points as the Carroll Chargers beat the Warsaw Tigers 50-45.
Scoring just two points in the third quarter, Warsaw lost its third straight game and finished the regular season with a record of 13-7.
Already struggling on the offensive end in the second half, the Tigers didn’t have a defensive stopper for McKeeman.
“He’s good,” Warsaw coach Doug Ogle said of McKeeman. “He doesn’t need much time or space. He had a good game. He was impressive.
“The play that really hurt us was in the second half, it was kind of a scramble situation and we trapped for some reason, they reversed it to him on the left wing and nobody was within 15 feet of him. We gave him that 3 instead of just matching up.
“We weren’t very solid in the second half tonight. Carroll is certainly good enough to take advantage of that.”
The Tigers shot 50 percent from the field in the first half, leading 17-14 after one quarter of play and 31-24 at halftime.
Over the final 16 minutes, however, the hosts made just 6 of 20 shots, including a 2-of-11 performance from three-point range in the third and fourth quarters.
The Chargers, who improved to 15-7 this season and extended their win streak over Warsaw to three, shot 56 percent from the field in the second half and made more free throws (14) in the game than the Tigers attempted (9).
Carroll outscored Warsaw 14-2 in the third quarter and 26-14 overall after the break.
“We had a bad third quarter in every way,” said Ogle. “The first half we were pretty good. I thought we were pretty solid in the first half and did a lot of good things, and then for some reason we stopped doing the things we were doing in the first half.
“We became impatient offensively. Turnovers hurt us. Defensively, we had some tough breaks go against us. I thought Nolan Groninger took a charge early in the half. The guy knocked him down and then scores. I thought that was a big momentum call.
“Offensively, I thought we shot too many 3s. We’re too in love with the 3 right now. They shot 24 free throws and we shot nine. That’s because they shot 12 threes and we shot 21.”
Warsaw was 17 of 42 from the field overall, 6 of 21 from the arc, and 5 of 9 at the free throw line.
Carroll finished the game 16 of 33 from the field overall, 4 of 12 from three-point range, and 14 of 24 at the charity stripe.
To go with McKeeman’s 20 points, the Chargers got 11 points and five rebounds from Preston Shearer and 10 points and seven boards from David Ejah.
Junior Wyatt Amiss made a trio of three-pointers and led the Tigers with 12 points.
Groninger scored nine points and dished out six assists, while classmates Rumple and Metzinger tallied eight and seven points, respectively.
Metzinger’s offensive output accounted for the Tigers’ first seven points of the game.
After winning their first eight home games this season, the Tigers have lost their lost two, including Tuesday’s loss to Elkhart Memorial that left Warsaw in a tie for the Northern Lakes Conference championship.
Ogle said winning a sectional title next week would put the two home losses in the last four days behind them.
Warsaw opens postseason play Tuesday at 7 p.m. at historic North Side Gym with a rematch against Elkhart Memorial.
“We can erase the bad taste with a sectional championship,” said Ogle. “That’s what we’re gonna try and do. That’s what we talked about. This is not what we wanted, but we gotta turn the page right away. If we win the sectional, that’ll make this night a little easier to take.”
Warsaw won the JV game 46-35 and finished the season with a record of 17-3.
Brock Poe led the JV Tigers with 15 points.
CARROLL 50, WARSAW 45
C 14 10 14 12 – 50
W 17 14 2 12 – 45
Carroll – Richie Gross 1-3 0-0 2, Ray Vollmer 0-3 2-4 2, Daniel McKeeman 6-12 4-5 20, Preston Shearer 4-5 3-7 11, David Ejah 4-7 2-4 10, Sam Strycker 0-0 2-2 2, Ryan Preston 1-3 1-2 3. Totals 16-33 14-24 50.
