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Waite senior guard Dishon Harris perhaps said it best about the Indians' travails throughout the season.
“We had obstacles to overcome as a team,” said Harris, Waite's leading scorer (10.3 ppg.) and third-team All-City League selection. “This one, we just fell short.”
The Indians' season came to an end Wednesday night at Bowling Green State University. Rogers, which dismantled Waite by a 73-48 during the regular season, hung on for a 51-50 win over the Indians in a Division II district semifinal at Anderson Arena.
The Rams (13-5) advanced to Saturday's district finals against surging Scott (10-10), a team Waite destroyed by 20 points, 69-49, on Dec. 12 at Start. That, however, was when the Indians had their all-league senior guard, Ke-Sean Harris, who was ruled academically ineligible a few weeks later.
Waite, which finished 7-14, wasn't the same after that. But it was hard to tell by watching the Indians' effort against Rogers on Wednesday.
“I had higher expectations this season,” coach Dave Pitsenbarger said. “Tonight, the kids played really hard and executed the game plan ... Ke-Sean is sorely missed.”
Dishon Harris, who had 13 points and five rebounds in Wednesday's loss, said, “We had some chemistry issues, but by the end of the year we came together. The way we played tonight, if we would have played that way all year, everything would have been different.”
Waite, which won a D-I sectional title two years ago, dropped down to D-II this season. Pitsenbarger said the Indians dealt with several in-house issues during the season, but the team began to gain confidence down the stretch.
After a first-round tournament bye, Waite earned a sectional title with a 53-45 win over CL rival Woodward on March 4 at Clay. That set up the second meeting against Rogers this week.
In the first meeting, the Indians played the Rams just about even in the second half. But by then it was too late in a game Pitsenbarger said “may have been our worst game all year.”
“We played very undisciplined and had a lot of turnovers,” he said. “We tried to play their style of ball, which is up-tempo. That was definitely one team we didn't want to play up-tempo with. We didn't play to our strengths. We got out to a bad start and we tried to run with them.”
On Wednesday, the Indians took a 14-5 lead on Kenneth Walker's 3-pointer with 1:41 left in the first quarter before Rogers finally woke up. The Rams outscored Waite 13-3 over the next three minutes to go ahead 18-17 at the 6:26 mark of the second quarter, and they never trailed again.
“I knew they were going to come out and play hard,” Rogers coach Earl Morris said of the Indians.
Waite battled back from a 46-38 deficit with about four minutes left in the game and had a chance to win at the end. The Indians called a timeout with 1.8 seconds left, trailing 51-48. Rogers, however, took away Waite's inbounds plays for a 3-point shot, and a layup by Hughes at the buzzer ended the game.
Senior guard Timmy Morehead led the Indians with 16 points and six assist with two steals.
“We picked up the pressure at the end to try to get some momentum going our way, and it seemed like it worked there for a while,” Pitsenbarger said. “We got a couple breaks to possibly send it into overtime. The kids just played hard.”
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