WARSAW — It’s not every day that you get an opportunity to play for a championship, so you have to make the most of those opportunities when they present themselves.

Warsaw’s girls basketball team took its shot at Indiana Basketball Coaches Association No. 20-rated Chesterton in the championship game of the Lady Tiger Basketball Tournament Wednesday night, but Kaylee Patton’s 3-point attempt from the wing at the final buzzer fell just off its mark. The crowd exhaled sharply as the last-second shot caromed off the rim, Warsaw head coach Lenny Krebs sunk to his knees on the sideline, and the home team came up just short in a 40-39 thriller at the Tiger Den.

“That’s a top 20 team in the state right there. They’re 14-1. They beat Lake Central, they’ve had a few tougher games, and I think the girls are sitting in the locker room right now, they know it’s a game that slipped out of our fingers that we should’ve had,” said Krebs. “I have no doubt that they’re going to respond to this game because they have every single game.”

The two teams played pretty evenly throughout a championship that saw four lead changes and eight ties. The only stat line that showed any glaring difference was the free throw margin — where the Trojans (14-1) made each and every one of their 13 attempts, and the Tigers (10-5) took just a single trip to the charity stripe. Chesterton made eight of those free throws in the decisive fourth period alone, Maddie Scott’s two freebies in the bonus with 1:04 remaining providing the final lead change of the night.

“Compliments to Chesterton — 13 for 13 from the line. We knew they were a great free throw team coming in, and that’s what I was trying to talk to the girls about,” explained Krebs. “The last couple possessions, they were content to let the ball come inbounds and just foul instead of denying to prevent that inbounds pass because we knew they were going to hit their free throws, and stats prove that.”

“But that 13-to-1 difference is something that goes back to what I talked about on the air just a couple minutes ago — how cautious we were on the offensive end,” he continued. “We weren’t the aggressors. We didn’t force the action. We were content to throw the ball around the perimeter, and we continued to put ourselves in trapping zones and then trying to escape instead of avoiding the trap by getting the ball moving. I tell the kids ‘I can always tell how aggressive you are by how many free throws you shoot.’ That proves it.”

Neither team looked particularly aggressive as they felt each other out over an 11-11 first half. They combined for a 9-of-34 shooting clip and 27 turnovers in a tentative opening half where two good defensive teams essentially stalemated one another.

That all changed quickly in the third period, however. Warsaw converted at a 13-for-20 (65 percent) clip after the break, and if Chesterton didn’t pick up the offensive pace, the Trojans at least picked up their efficiency with 8-of-14 (57 percent) shooting — including 3 of 5 3-pointers — over the second half.

“My comment to the girls at halftime was we just need to play on the offensive end with the same intensity that we play on the defensive end. If we can figure out how to do that on both ends of the floor, we’re going to be alright,” said Krebs.

“When we attacked on the offensive end we were able to score and get high-percentage shots. Some that scored, some that didn’t, but we’re shooting 50 percent. We’ve got to make sure we find ways to get a shot every single possession, and that was my frustration in the first half — I didn’t feel like we were getting enough shots up. We got 17 shots, and even then I thought they were low percentage shots because, like I said, we were very cautious with our offense. I thought they came out and were much more aggressive.”

That more aggressive start translated into an initial 11-4 lead by the visitors, but the Tigers scored the last seven points of the first half to knot it up at halftime. They took their last lead of the night on a Kacy Bragg lay-in on a short corner pass from Emma Bohnenkamper at the 4:25 mark of the fourth and pushed that 33-32 advantage out to a full possession with Halle Shipp’s steal and assist of another Bragg lay-up with 2:33 on the clock.

But Miah Holsclaw’s tear drop lay-up and four straight free throws by the Trojans put Chesterton out front, 40-37 with just 12 seconds to go. Maddie Ryman took the ball the length of the floor against a Chesterton safety press, and her uncontested lay-up with 6.3 ticks to go cut Warsaw’s deficit to a single point. After Brielle Harrison got a hand on the ensuing inbound pass to Haley Moore and the loose ball rolled off Moore and out of bounds with the clock reading 4.7 seconds, the Tigers got the ball back under their own basket, and Krebs called timeout to draw up one final play.

Patton’s last-second shot from way out nearly went in, but it wasn’t to be as the home team finished on the wrong side of the down-to-the-wire championship game.

“The way Chesterton was playing, the chances of us getting the ball in the paint, that wasn’t going to be good, but we were able to get it inbounds. We’ve got to be able to catch the ball on balance in that situation and attack and make the official blow his whistle,” said Krebs of the final play. “Kaylee had a great look. We would prefer a look from 2 feet, not 22 feet, and that’s what we talked about there at the end — we’re going to make an official blow his whistle there by attacking and looking for that close-range shot. We have to do a better job at that. I admire Kaylee for stepping up and wanting that shot in that situation. A lot of kids, they’re afraid to take that shot because they think they’re going to lose that basketball game, and my comment to Kaylee was that shot didn’t lose us the basketball game; it just prevented us from winning it.”

Courtney Krol finished with a game-high 11 points and three steals in the championship game on her way to tournament MVP honors for Chesterton. Hailey Vale put up nine and was also named to the all-tournament team.

Bohnenkamper led Warsaw in the scoring column with nine points on 4-of-8 shooting in the title game, and Ryman scored eight points with six rebounds and four assists after putting up a game-high in the early semifinal as both were named to the all-tourney team for the Tigers.

“I’m proud of the entire team. Maddie and Emma, they stepped up and definitely deserved that recognition that they got with the all-tourney team. I just wish the ending could’ve been a little bit different,” said Krebs.

Next up for the Tigers is a Northern Lakes Conference game at Plymouth Jan. 3. Chesterton hosts Gary West on Jan. 2.

WARSAW 43, MISHAWAKA 28

The Tigers led by a tentative 18-15 margin at the half but used a strong defensive effort in the third period — one that produced eight turnovers by Mishawaka (6-9) and held the Cavemen to 1 of 7 shooting in the frame — to break the game open with a 13-2 quarter.

“We made some adjustments on things at the half of what we wanted to do defensively. The first half I thought we were a little bit too aggressive defensively, and we were picking up some fouls, allowing some penetration to happen that shouldn’t have happened,” explained Krebs.

“We’re going to continue to hang our hat on the defensive end. We’re not good enough offensively — individually or as a team — yet to just trade baskets with people and beat them.”

Warsaw struggled to find the basket against a Mishawaka box-and-one early, but the lopsided third quarter forced the Cavemen into a more familiar man-to-man scheme and made things easier on the Tigers offensively. Ryman netted a game-high 16 points — including seven in the decisive third period — and distributed seven assists while running the point for the home team in the win.

“I am just so proud of Maddie because she continues to grow and get better every game,” said Krebs after the semifinal.

“I would never want to play point guard in my system because I put a lot of pressure on that person to make the right decisions and get the team in the offense they’re supposed to be in. They’re the coach on the floor. Early on I think she struggled with that, but you can see her continually grow and become confident. If you look at the last two games she’s put maybe 32, 35 points on the board. You can see her continue to grow. Our goal is to make sure we’re getting that from five people, not two. I still haven’t seen a game where we played well as a unit on the offensive end for the entire time.”

Mishawaka (6-10) was led by Delaney Basker’s 10 points and seven rebounds in the semifinal loss. The Cavemen went on to fall 50-32 to Perry Meridian in the consolation game at the Tiger Den Wednesday evening.

Basker, Aryana Shelton and Gretta Meixel each scored eight in the consolation loss. The Falcons (5-10) were paced by Sadie Hill’s five triples and 21 points, followed by Arian Booker’s 14.