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Kroft adds 13, Loehmer scores 8 and wins sportsmanship award
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
DELPHI — The Winamac girls basketball team had a long chat after its ride home from Delphi after losing in the semifinals of the Indiana Kitchen Classic to Rossville on Friday.
While Winamac played the last three-and-a-half minutes of the Rossville game with only four players after two of the six players that dressed fouled out, this talk was not necessarily sympathetic.
Rather it was a call to play for each other and become a team.
Less than 24 hours later, they answered the call, rallying from a nine-point second quarter deficit and overcoming starting point guard Kandace Kroft fouling out with 4:16 to go in regulation to beat host Delphi 57-51 in overtime at Oracle Arena in the third-place game Saturday.
Winamac trailed 50-48 in the overtime but finished on a 9-1 run. Sadie Popejoy, who finished with a game-high 25 points for Winamac, started the run when she hit a 15-foot turnaround jumper off the dribble, and she hit the go-ahead free throw with 1:45 left.
Popejoy outscored the entire Delphi team 7-5 in the overtime, and those heroics only occurred after her 4-point play with 52.5 seconds left in regulation gave Winamac a 46-45 lead.
Kroft added 13, and Loehmer and Iverson added eight each. Iverson also hauled down 17 rebounds.
After Popejoy’s free throw, Maggie Keller then immediately stole the inbounds pass and was fouled and split a pair of free throws to make it 52-50.
Jenna Roth split a pair of free throws for Delphi with 51.0 seconds left to cut the lead to one, but Mershai Loehmer, who was honored with a tournament sportsmanship award during a pregame ceremony, then hit two free
throws with 42.4 seconds left and split another pair from the line to make it a 55-51 game with 19.3 seconds left.
After Delphis’s Airy Lattimore missed, Popejoy completed the scoring with two free throws with one second left.
Roth hit four 3-pointers and scored 19 points for Delphi, but she made only three of 12 free throws. Senior post Mady Brown contributed 13 points and 15 rebounds.
Winamac made 17 of 23 free throws while Delphi went 11 for 27.
Winamac coach Tony Stesiak explained the genesis of the Friday night team meeting.
“I don’t think we played very well,” Stesiak said of the 51-35 loss to Rossville Friday. “We had a heart to heart talk when we got back last night about where we want to go and what we want to do and long-term goals and those kinds of things, and I kind of challenged them, and they responded today. It’s up there with one of the more proud wins we’ve had in the last three years, just with all the circumstances we had to deal with.”
Popejoy said the win felt good. She said they needed something to bring them back up as a team. She was then asked about the team meeting.
“We had a big team talk last night,” Popejoy said. “It was not that we were so getting yelled at. We just needed to come together. We just felt like we were separate. We just didn’t play as a team last night. We needed to do better at that.”
But another message Popejoy had heard long before the team meeting was to become more versatile. Already an accomplished shooter, Stesiak challenged her to become a better ballhandler and passer.
“Sadie has improved more so than anybody else on our team,” Stesiak said. “They’ve all gotten better, but she has taken several leaps. We talked last year about you’ve become a shooter. Everybody knows you’re a shooter. You’ve established that. So how can we take your game to the next level? Let’s handle it more. Let’s drive it more. Let’s be a better passer. Let’s be a better defender and rebounder. Every positive number’s up. Rebounds are up. She’s moving. She’s penetrating. She’s got the pullup game. Great step-back today from the paint.
“She’s really rounding out her game, and today was a big leadership because when Kandace was off the floor, the focus was on her. The defense knew the focus was on her, and she still made shots and made plays.”
Kroft was called for her third foul with 6:38 left in the third quarter and Winamac leading 27-25. Stesiak benched Kroft, who is second on the team in scoring and rebounding and leads the team in assists. With her out, Winamac outscored Delphi 13-10 the rest of the quarter to take a 40-35 lead going into the fourth.
Brown tied the game with a half-hook in the lane as part of a 3-point play that tied it at 42 with 4:27 left. Eleven seconds later, Kroft was called for an offensive foul trying to drive into the paint.
Brown, a 5-10 post with a nifty passing eye, found Lattimore in the right corner for a 3-pointer and Delphi led 45-42 with 2:45 left.
Popejoy missed a 3-pointer, but Delphi was called for an over-and-back violation. After a Delphi steal, Stesiak could audibly heard yelling “fire” from the bench with just over a minute left.
Typically, this is an instruction from a coach whose team is trailing late in the game to begin fouling to stop the clock.
Roth had the ball and quickened her pace into the frontcourt when she heard Stesiak. She then took a 15-foot jumper from the right baseline with just over a minute left but fired up an air ball that went to the wrong side of the backboard and landed out of bounds.
Moments later, Loehmer passed out of the left corner to Popejoy at the top of the key, and she fired up a 3 as Sarah Perry met her. It went in as officials whistled Perry for a foul.
Popejoy made the ensuing free throw with 52.5 seconds left, and Winamac was back ahead. She also had a 4-point play last year against Culver.
“Last year, all I did was shoot honestly,” Popejoy said. “I did some driving, but I wasn’t confident with myself. I worked on it during the summer, and I became confident, so I started to do more of that and got some moves in.”
But Keller fouled Roth with 45.6 seconds left, and she hit one of two free throws to tie the game at 46.
Winamac called timeout with 27.8 seconds left, but a Perry steal gave Delphi the ball back. A Roth miss just before the buzzer ensured overtime.
Brown hit two free throws with 3:37 left to open up scoring in overtime. But Popejoy hit a pullup jumper off a horns set to tie it at 48.
But Brown grabbed an offensive rebound and fed Peyton Morrow for a layup, and Delphi was ahead again.
Winamac got off to a 9-3 start but trailed 25-16 in the second quarter, but a Popejoy 3 and an Iverson layup that Kroft set up with a drive and dish cut the lead to four at the half. Kroft then scored the first six points of the second half to make it 27-25.
Stesiak lauds Loehmer
One player on each team in the tournament was recognized for their sportsmanship. Loehmer was the Winamac honoree.
“There’s nobody on our team that cheers and celebrates more for other people’s success than Shai Loehmer,” Stesiak said. “She is about the team, the team, the team, and whether she scores or not, how much she plays, she wants everybody to be successful, and it means a lot for her to play basketball for this program. Everything that we talk about what I think Lady Warrior basketball means in terms of just competing, playing hard, being a good person, all those things Shai typifies. That’s why she’s our Sportsmanship winner. She’s kind of our captain. She leads by her personality. She’s a great person. I’ve been blessed to have a lot of great kids here these last three years. … You could pick a lot of them for an award, but I think Shai, really in her spirit and her vocal leadership, she’s always trying to get people hyped up, calm them down, encourage them. She’s done a great job as a leader, and we appreciate that.
“And she made some big free throws and big plays too.”
Third-place game: Winamac 57, Delphi 51 (OT)
WINAMAC (57) (10-6)
Kandace Kroft 3 6-6 13, Mershai Loehmer 2 3-4 8, Sadie Popejoy 8 5-7 25, Maggie Keller 1 1-4 3, Marissa Iverson 3 2-2 8, Kaelyn O’Connor 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 17 17-23 57
DELPHI (51) (6-9)
Airy Lattimore 2 1-2 7, Jenna Roth 6 3-12 19, Sarah Perry 0 1-2 1, Peyton Morrow 3 3-6 9, Mady Brown 5 3-5 13, Allie Huffman 0 0-0 0, Sami Leopard 1 0-0 2
TEAM: 17 11-27 51
Three-point field goals:
Winamac 6 (Popejoy 4, Kroft, Loehmer),
Delphi 6 (Roth 4, Lattimore 2)
Total fouls: Winamac 20, Delphi 23
Fouled out: Kroft (WIN), 4:16, fourth; Lattimore (DEL), :1.0, OT
Turnovers: Winamac 22, Delphi 20
Score by quarters
Winamac 11 10 19 6 11 – 57
Delphi 10 15 10 11 5 – 51
Rossville 51, Winamac 35 (Friday)
Popejoy scored 15 points, and Kroft added 10, but the Lady Warriors lost to Rossville in the semifinals at Delphi Friday.
Ava Burkle scored a game-high 17 for Rossville, Caydence Robey added 14, and Allie Elliott had 10 for the Lady Hornets.
Rossville led 26-15 at halftime before Winamac trimmed the deficit to 41-31 after three quarters.
Winamac did not have a field goal in the fourth quarter.
Winamac made 12 of 24 free throws while Rossville nailed 19 of 21. Rossville also made eight 3-pointers.
Kroft and Iverson fouled out, and Winamac played the final three-and-a-half minutes with four players.
Rossville advanced to play Pioneer in the final. Pioneer beat Delphi 58-39 in their semifinal.
WINAMAC (35) (9-6)
Kandace Kroft 2 4-6 10, Sadie Popejoy 4 6-9 15, Maggie Keller 2 0-0 4, Mershai Loehmer 1 0-0 2, Marissa Iverson 1 1-5 3, Kaelyn O’Connor 0 1-4 1
TEAM: 10 12-24 35
ROSSVILLE (51) (9-4)
Vanderwall 0 1-2 1, Robey 4 2-2 14, Elliott 4 3-3 12, Burkle 3 9-10 17, Layton 0 2-2 2, Paschal 1 2-2 5, Gergely 0 0-0 0, Ford 0 0-0 0, Seest 0 0-0 0, Hathaway 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 12 19-21 51
Three-point field goals:
Winamac 3 (Kroft 2, Popejoy),
Rossville 8 (Robey 4, Burkle 2, Elliott, Paschal)
Total fouls: Winamac 19, Rossville 17
Score by quarters
Winamac 7 8 16 4 – 35
Rossville 17 9 15 10 – 51
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