Vikings Hope To Right The ShipAKRON – Of the 12 players on Tippecanoe Valley High School’s varsity boys basketball roster, six of them played football in the fall for the Vikings.
They were part of a resurgence of the proud program, helping put the Vikings in the Three Rivers Conference championship game in coach Steve Moriarty’s second season at the helm.
Chad Patrick, in his second year as the boys basketball head coach at Valley, would love to see the same kind of turnaround on the hardwood.
The Vikings, who open the season Wednesday with a trip to county rival Warsaw, were 5-18 overall and 2-7 in conference play last season.
Valley returns all but two players from last year – Dakota Parker, who graduated, and Alex Morrison, who chose not to play.
The Vikings’ 12-man roster is made up of five seniors, five juniors and two freshmen.
In terms of varsity experience, Valley is certainly ahead of where it was at this time last year. Patrick hopes that helps the Vikings right the ship as they try to snap a streak of three consecutive losing seasons.
“We had a pretty good summer,” said Patrick, who was an assistant at Valley for 19 seasons under his dad, Hall of Fame coach Bill Patrick, who is an assistant on the staff.
“We have a lot of kids that play football. It was a good summer. They did a lot of both (football and basketball), so they were very busy. We had three or four kids that played a lot of AAU and were in the gym a lot.”
Seniors on Valley’s roster include Jalen Shepherd, Parkur Dalrymple, Wes Melanson, Cameron Parker and Dwight Conley.
Juniors include Tanner Trippiedi, Jalen Potter, Jace Potter, Bryce Fisher and Ross O’Connor, a move-in from Michigan who previously attended Valley schools when he was younger.
Rex Kirchenstein and Braden Shepherd are the two freshmen on the varsity roster.
Trippiedi led Valley in scoring last year with 11 points per game and also averaged two rebounds, two assists and nearly two steals per game.
Cam Parker averaged nearly eight points and four boards per game, while Dalrymple chipped in with six points per contest.
Patrick said he’s changed his style of coaching a little bit, saying he’s gone back to a detail-oriented approach, and that a big focus in the offseason was defense.
The Vikings were outscored by an average of 54-44 last season.
“I thought we could change a few things and do it a little different than we had in the past,” said Patrick. “I have done things different, people can see that, but I’ve gone back to a lot more detail-oriented approach, going back to focus on defense and doing things that we had always done.
“Last year we had a lot of bad shooting games, and you can’t win if you don’t play defense. That was our primary focus in the offseason and so far in practice, it’s been defense and toughness.”
After Wednesday’s opener at Warsaw, the Vikings play home games against Argos (Nov. 27), Knox (Nov. 30) and Oregon-Davis (Dec. 4).
Valley opens conference play on Dec. 11 at Peru.
Columbia City is a new opponent on the schedule, and Valley will host the Eagles on Dec. 28.
Other notable non-conference games on the Vikings’ schedule include a game at LaVille on Dec. 21, a trip to Plymouth on Jan. 5, and a trip to NorthWood on Feb. 12.
“In the TRC, I think Manchester will be good, I think Wabash and Peru are gonna be really tough,” said Patrick.
“The top three, four, five teams will be good, and then the rest of us will be decent I think, but I think Manchester and Peru and Wabash are the cream of the crop in the TRC this year.
“We play LaVille, we play NorthWood, we play some pretty good teams other than Warsaw. We added Columbia City to the schedule this year. It’s not an easy schedule, but I don’t want an easy schedule either, I want some tough teams and I want to be prepared for the sectional. I want to get back to where we were winning sectionals and competing for sectionals every year.”
