WARSAW – As good as advertised.

That’s what the Warsaw boys basketball team was Wednesday night.

Star Kyle Mangas put on a season-opening show in a festive Tiger Den as the Class 4-A No. 5 Tigers crushed Tippecanoe Valley 75-27 in the lid lifter for both teams.

The night saw plenty of celebration as last year’s Class 4-A Final Four Warsaw team received rings prior to the varsity tilt. A banner recognizing the 25-2 team was also raised in the Tiger Den by last year’s senior trio of Paul Marandet, Riley Rhoades and Evan Schmidt.

Warsaw coach Doug Ogle also saluted the loud and proud student cheerblock by passing out rings, as in Ring-Pops, to them prior to the contest.

And by the way, Mangas dished up a delicious performance as the Tigers feasted on the Vikings from start to finish.

Senior guard Mangas poured in 30 points on 13-18 shooting and had six rebounds and four assists. The All-Star candidate, who was greeted with chants of “Mr. Basketball” from his adoring fellow students, capped his tremendous showing with a crowd-pleasing slam dunk off an alley-ooo pass from Asher Blum in the final quarter.

The Tigers, who had 12 players score in the game, shot 32-48 from the field. The hosts, who beat Valley 60-35 last year, had 20 assists to just five turnovers.

Senior Jarod Duzenbery scored 11 points and senior DeSean Heckman 10 to lead Valley. Senior Alec Craig, who was the team’s top scorer last year at 13 points-per-game, was scoreless on 0-8 shooting for the Vikings.

Mangas, who averaged 19.4 points-per-game a year ago, even flashed a rare smile after slamming in his dunk with 5:32 left in the game.

“Kyle was feeling it tonight,” said Ogle. “He had a couple of moves that I had not seen from him before, a couple of them that reminded me of the Ice Man (George Gervin). There are just not too many chinks in his armor.

“This is a good starting point for us. The 20 assists to five turnovers are impressive. We rebounded the ball very well and that was something that we challenged our guys about doing tonight. I was happy that our offense did not become loose once we got a big lead. I also thought that Jaceb Burish did a good job for us.

“It was nice to get a lot of different guys time tonight. Our defense was okay, but I think that Craig just had an off shooting night for them. We did not really have a feel for Valley, but we knew that Craig was pretty good. I think that our size is going to be problematic for some teams.”

Valley, which finished 11-14 last season, led 3-0 on a trey by Duzenbery 47 seconds into the contest.

From there, it was all Tigers.

Warsaw used a 12-0 run, sparked by eight points from Mangas, to take control. The Tigers led 17-5 after the opening period and 33-16 at halftime as Mangas had 14 points. Warsaw shot 14-26 in the opening half, while Valley was 6-18.

The second half only got worse for Valley, which now trails in the series 32-6 and has lost nine of the last 11 versus the Tigers. The Vikings shot just 3-14 in the final half, while Warsaw was on fire at 18-22.

Veteran Valley coach Bill Patrick did not think his team put up much of a fight.

“Warsaw is better than we are, there’s no question about that,” said the Hall of Famer. “But, I’m disappointed that we did not play harder. We did not compete at times and there’s no excuse for that. Mentally we were not into it. I thought that Keith Wright and Tanner Trippiedi played hard for us.

“We just were not ready for the difference in competition. This should make us realize that we have to go harder in practice. We really need to have a different approach in practice. We’ve got a lot to fix and in a hurry too.

“Alec has had some injuries, but I’m not making excuses for him. It makes it tough when he has no points. We need him to score. Warsaw has a lot of size and plays good defense. But we had three of our starters combine to score two points tonight.”

Senior Jeremy David scored seven points for Warsaw. The quartet of junior Ross Johnson, senior Jaceb Burish, senior Braxton Minix and junior Zach Riley each had five points, while junior Asher Blum and senior Kyle Skeans each had four. Senior Sam Miller and junior Jack Rhoades each had three points and senior Shane Powers and sophomore Nolan Groninger two each.

Freshman Tanner Trippiedi had four points and sophomore Alex Morrison two for the Vikings.

Warsaw won the junior varsity game 47-12. Landen Ferber had 13 points and Nolan Groninger 12 for the winners. Luke Prater led Valley with six points.

Warsaw hosts Columbia City (0-1) Saturday night. Valley hosts Argos (1-0) Tuesday night. Whitko defeated Columbia City 60-41 and Argos topped Bremen 57-36 Wednesday night.