BENTON – Wawasee’s first girls basketball road trip wasn’t especially far from its campus. But after a 63-26 non-conference loss at Fairfield Tuesday night, it had to have been the longest eight-mile bus ride home in recent memory.
The Lady Warriors started off poorly. They had just two shots from the floor, missing both, and turned the ball over 12 times in the first quarter. They finished the first half with 17 turnovers and 15 points.
The Lady Falcons outscored Wawasee 22-6 in the third period to put the game well out of reach.
Fairfield pulled down twice as many rebounds as Wawasee, and made more than three times as many field goals as the Lady Warriors.
Wawasee coach Matt Carpenter didn’t mince words regarding his team’s performance.
“I’ve never seen this side from my group in two years. I told them it’s not an Xs and Os thing right now. We have to hold each other accountable to our three culture areas, to the three promises we made to each other,” said Carpenter.
“We didn’t show character tonight like we’re capable of doing, we didn’t show the competitiveness necessary, and we didn’t communicate on either end of the floor. When we got frustrated, we didn’t respond. And it showed up in a big way on the scoreboard. I’m extremely disappointed.”
Carpenter said the best thing his team can do is get back to the standards the Lady Warriors have set for themselves, and put Tuesday in the rear-view mirror.
“Can we fix it? Yeah, because it has a lot to do with us. This is all on us right now,” he said. “Fairfield was ready to play, give them a ton of credit. They have six seniors who are a veteran group, and they took some easy things away from us. They made things difficult for us offensively and defensively.
“But we’ve seen these things before. We’ve gone up against offenses and defenses like that. We know their personnel and they know ours. They just beat us tonight.
“There are things that are on us; things we gotta fix. They know what the expectations are in our program, and we hold ourselves to a high standard. I’m disappointed we didn’t reach that standard. Tonight, we let our program down.”
Aubrey Kuhn hit a trio of three-point shots to lead Wawasee with 12 points, and Kabrea Rostochak hit five free throws and a trey for eight points. Fairfield’s Katie Lashley had a game-high 13 points, with Jenean Schwartz hitting four treys for 12 points. Jordan Kintigh and Felicity Bontrager scored nine points each.
Wawasee fell to 1-2 for the season, and will host Westview (1-0) Friday night.
