Trojans’ battle cry heading into tonight’s sectional championship game vs. Valpo: Nothing to lose!

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

The motto for tonight’s Chesterton sectional championship game against Valparaiso at 6 p.m. didn’t take long to form.
In the moments after the Trojans built a big lead early and hung on to defeat Merrillville 58-54 in the first game of a semifinal doubleheader Friday, multiple voices on the winning side spoke the same three words: “Nothing to lose!”
Coach Candy Wilson, in her first year since leaving Valparaiso to take over at her alma mater, said it.
Junior point guard Kenedi Bradley, surely on her way to a third consecutive All-DAC season, said it.
And Isabelle Connors, the leader of the three-deep senior class, said a form of it.
“Just prove them wrong again because I don’t think people expected us to win this,” Connors said. “Merrillville was ranked higher than us. Everything went against us, but we still made it happen, and I think we can do the same thing tomorrow.”
Those are confident words for a player on a team that lost to Valpo 63-35 in the regular season. Then again, the way the Trojans played to start the game against Merrillville, a team that had beaten them 51-40 on Jan. 10 certainly wasn’t based on the pervious game. Running floor fast and pressuring the ball, cutting hard to the hoop and draining 3-pointers, the Trojans took a 25-15 lead after the first quarter.
“You can’t play intimidated,” Wilson said. “We’ll have a game plan. We’ll have a game plan. We have some kids who have been in this situation, and we’ve got nothing to lose, nothing to lose.”
The way Bradley has been playing of late, particularly in the semifinal vs. Merrillville, that can’t do anything but bolster the confidence of her teammates who look to her to lead the way.
Valpo won the DAC championship with an undefeated record in league play, which included a 63-35 rout at Chesterton Dec. 20 in the Trojans’ gym. Valpo star junior Lillian Barnes, the DAC MVP in her first two seasons, dropped 32 points on the Trojans that night.
That’s was in the first game without Tenley Davis, when the team appeared numb from the shock of losing such a key player. Davis never returned from a an aversion fracture of the ankle and after a rough adjustment period that last a handful of games, the team grew closer and performed better as the season progressed.
“There’s nothing to lose. We’re going to play our hearts out,” Bradley said. “We’re going to try to leave it all out on the floor. We’re going to try carry in what we did in this game into that game, try to make smart passes and not let them speed us up, and I feel like that will help us a lot.”
In short: Nothing to lose!