Tippecanoe Valley’s Tanner Trippiedi lunges for a loose ball alongside Lakeland’s Bracey Shepherd in the sectional opener Tuesday at NorthWood. (Photos by Mike Deak)

NAPPANEE – The cliché ‘tale of two halves’ is used often. It’s being used again to describe what happened between Lakeland and Tippecanoe Valley Tuesday night in the opening round of the NorthWood Boys Basketball Sectional.

A 24-24 tie at halftime saw Lakeland start to pull away in the third quarter, then completely shut out the Vikings in the fourth quarter en route to a 54-33 win to open the five-team Class 3-A Sectional 21 tournament.

Brayden Bontrager had 24 points to lead Lakeland.

In doing so, Lakeland held Valley’s lone senior, Tanner Trippiedi, scoreless in the contest and kept the Vikings off the board for over nine of the game’s final minutes.

“They were really good against Tanner,” stated Tippecanoe Valley head coach Chad Patrick. “He had a couple wide open shots and didn’t knock them down. They just stayed on him the whole night. Other than Paul (Leasure) and Tanner, we struggled to get anybody else to score a whole lot. That’s tough when they shut Tanner down and hold him scoreless. It’s pretty tough to score a lot of points for us.”

It wasn’t as if Lakeland was head and shoulders the better side. At 36-33 in the third quarter, Valley was holding on despite Trippiedi’s lack of scoring. But a Brayden Bontrager three started the run, which took the lead to six at the end of the third, then had Lakeland finish on an 15-0 bulge in the fourth to complete an 18-0 run to close out the game.

Bontrager’s impact in the game was evident, as the 6-4 forward built more like a fullback, scored 13 points in the third quarter, working both inside and outside to do the damage. Bontrager hit two threes in the third, which opened the Valley defense up enough to stretch out the attention.

The holes in the Viking defense became quite noticeable in the fourth as Lakeland went right to the rack with and-ones from Braden Yoder and Colton Issacs sandwiching a nice spin move and score from Bontrager to start an 8-0 surge right out of the quarter break. The Viking Ship was indeed sinking after Dawson Perkins was called for a goaltending violation that pushed the score to 49-33.

Lakelands Braden Yoder reacts to a made basket by teammate Colton Issacs.

“We kept Braden (Shepherd) and Rex (Kirchenstien) on him because he can shoot so far out and he hit those threes,” noted Patrick of guarding Bontrager in different parts of the court. “Then he took us down inside and posted, and we’ve worked on helping, but we were slow getting there and they had other kids that stepped up, especially (Bracey) Shepherd. He had a great game.”

Bontrager led Lakeland with 24 points and Shepherd finished with 17 points. Shepherd’s two threes right out of the gate in the first quarter set the tone for Lakeland. Valley would respond after falling behind 15-6, coming all the way back to take the lead at 20-18 when Brendyn Stump got an offensive rebound and a putback.

Issacs would add eight points for the Lakers (7-16), which will prepare for a rematch with Wawasee in Friday’s second semi-final. The Warriors toppled the Lakers, 39-25, on Feb. 1.

Leasure would drain four three-pointers and lead the Vikings (9-14) with 15 points to close out a sensational freshman campaign. Shepherd added seven points and Dawson Perkins had five points. Valley bows out of the tournament after winning the sectional in 2019.

Friday’s opening contest will have host NorthWood (16-6) take on West Noble (8-14). The two winners Friday night will return to The Pit Saturday night for the sectional championship.

Paul Leasure led Tippecanoe Valley with four three-pointers and 15 total points.