November 15.

That was the date that turned Valparaiso’s season around.

But at the time, most people close to the program thought what happened on that day was a bad thing for the team.

The Vikings played Carmel that day and won 43-38 in the championship game of the Valparaiso Tip-Off Classic.

But the victory was secondary. Early on in the contest, they lost the team’s leading scorer and one of its leading rebounders from last year’s squad in Lindsay Humes. She went down with a torn ACL in her knee and it looked like the season would be an uphill climb.

The Vikings lost by 11 at Merrillville six days later to open the Duneland Conference double round-robin schedule. Things looked bleak.

But the team rattled off 14 straight victories after that, and 20 of the next 21 games, including two victories against Merrillville and the team’s 11th regional title.

Many players made up for the loss of Humes. But the one who improved the most on the Vikings was junior center Cassie Kerns.

She took over Humes’ leading-scorer spot with just under 14 points per game, while grabbing 8.4 rebounds per game to notch Post-Tribune Girls Basketball Player of the Year.

“After Lindsay got hurt. the next practice, we talked about what we were going to do,” said Valparaiso coach Greg Kirby. “They all had to step up and make up for that loss. But I realized some players are able to step up more than others.”

Kerns had all of the tools to make the most impact — 6-foot-3, a great post-up game and the ability to block shots. She swatted 60 shot attempts on the season, including nine in Valpo’s regional semifinal against Elkhart Memorial.

But during the off-season in AAU, she worked on another aspect of her game that made her even more dangerous.

“I really worked on my outside game more,” she said. “Most of the players on the team were 6-foot or taller, so I was able to do other things.”

The double threat of her inside and outside game enabled senior guards Lauren Hutton and Leslie Bryan, and forwards Breanne Gustke and Erica Humes, to get more opportunities to score.

It was good and bad from Kerns’ perspective.

“It’s amazing what having a presence on the court does to open up other players,” she said. “It was nice, but it was also frustrating. Lauren would just hold the ball sometimes and two players would be covering me. Someone had to be open.”

It would be easy for that situation to make anyone cocky or overconfident. But Kerns is a product of Kirby’s system at Valparaiso of having several weapons on offense and defense.

She has bought into the system that resulted in a lot of victories.

“Everyone didn’t need to put the burden on themselves” Kerns said about Humes getting hurt. “Everyone just needed to get one more basket or one more rebound a game to make up for her. It could become overbearing for any one of us to put the whole burden on our shoulders.”

But she was the one with the broadest shoulders to take on the most burden.