Wheaton Academy’s Behr turns Aurora Christian inside-out
This is getting unBehrable for Aurora Christian. That’s right, unBehrable.
In December, Wheaton Academy 6-foot-8 junior Gordon Behr worked inside for 25 points against the Eagles.
Saturday night Eagles coach Pat McNamara employed a 1-2-2 zone defense to contain the paint and Behr went off for four 3-pointers and 18 points. By no means was he alone. Warriors guard Collin Roy also made four 3s for a game-high 22 points and Wheaton Academy shot an unconscious 16 of 25 from the arc in an 82-59 Suburban Christian Blue victory in West Chicago.
“A big part of the off-season was I worked more on my outside game so I could be more versatile, more guard-like, not just be all inside,” Behr said.
“We have a lot of good shooters and we can go inside-out, that’s what we work on a lot. When we’re able to feed it inside we can get easy 3s to the outside, normally.”
An abnormal 27-point first quarter essentially saw Wheaton Academy (13-5, 5-1) put the game away.
Shrugging off Ryan Suttle and Haydn McNelis 3s for an early 6-5 Aurora Christian lead, the Warriors made 7 of 8 beyond the arc, 3 by Roy. Behr capped the deluge with a top-of-the-key 3 for a 27-8 lead after a quarter.
“We tried to take the inside away a little bit, have our guys sagging off a little bit, but we just didn’t close out the shooters. That was a lot of the game right there,” said Aurora Christian coach Pat McNamara, whose Eagles dropped to 9-9, 0-6.
After Wheaton Academy lost its first SCC Blue game by a point Friday at St. Francis, this was a pick-me-up.
“This was a big bounce-back game for us,” Warriors said coach Paul Ferguson. “I thought our guys came out with a lot of energy in the first quarter. We shot the ball really well. I think we were 63 percent from the 3-point line, so that sure helps.”
Zach Singer and Suttle, who scored 14 and 13 points, respectively, to lead Aurora Christian, started to roll in the second quarter but the Eagles never got closer then 12 points, and that was before halftime. Worse news was senior forward Ryan McQuade, who scored 10 points, suffered a possibly serious left knee injury with three minutes left to play.
Joining Roy and Behr in double figures for the Warriors were Gabe Partain with 10 and the Ruggles boys — Josh with 11 and older brother Brandon with 10 points, 14 rebounds.
“We can’t have the excuse that we had a tough game last night (a 60-53 loss to Marmion) because I heard they had an even tougher game than we did,” said Eagles forward Cory Windle. “They just came out harder than we did and shot very well.”