St. Edward holds off Aurora Christian
Aurora Christian's boys basketball season opener did not start the way the Eagles may have wanted.
Though the Eagles' Zach Singer was announced as No. 33, he was wearing No. 21 on the court. After a quick conversation the referees gave Aurora Christian a technical foul and Gino Domel of St. Edward hit 1 of 2 free throws before the game officially started.
Turned out that quick lead would stick as the Green Wave rushed out to 22 first-quarter points and hit enough free-throws down the stretch to down the Eagles 73-62 in the 4th annual Burney Wilke Classic in North Aurora.
After Domel took his shots, the Green Wave (5-0) got the ball and immediately capitalized with a long 3-pointer from Kelvin Cortez-Harvey to push the lead to 4 points. Adding two more 3-pointers, Cortez-Harvey scored 11 of his game-high 18 points in the first quarter alone, putting Aurora Christian into a hole it could not dig out of.
Winning the Westminster Christian tournament and having four games under their belt gave the Green Wave more than just a step up on the competition according to coach P.J. White.
"It was a huge confidence booster for us," White said of the early tournament. "We played great teams (at Westminster). It's neat to play in a game first and come over here and play some teams that haven't played yet because they are good football schools playing late in the season. We had that problem this year too."
Joe French and Nick Duffy, along with Danny Favela and Domel, all joined the basketball team late because of their football commitment but did not seem to lose a step in the process. Playing together since grade school has certainly helped French, Duffy and the rest get back into form quickly after a shortened preseason.
French led the team with 10 assists and routinely found the open man the bottom of the basket. Duffy was one of the big benefactors from French, pouring in 16 points, as was Dwayne Allen Jr., who added 14 points off the bench.
"It's really nice having all of these other great offensive players," French said. "I know that if I get the ball in one of their hands they are going to score."
"Joe knows he's the leader of the team when he's out there on the floor," White said of his senior guard.
French also added 12 points, going 4-of-5 from the charity stripe late to seal the win after Aurora Christian found its groove and made a comeback attempt in the second half.
Coming out hard and running a full-court press toward the end of the second quarter and immediately starting the second half, the Eagles (0-1) went on an 8-0 run and forced St. Edward to call a time out after just under two minutes of play.
R.D. Lutze started the comeback for the Eagles, scoring all 8 of the points during the run with a short 2-pointer and a pair of 3s, but could have had much more.
"After he got those two (3-pointers) in a row, for some reason we just could not find him," Eagles' coach Pat McNamara said. "We saw it from the bench that he was wide open a number of times and our guys were just not looking for him. I think our guys, we got into that hole early and pushed too much to catch up in a hurry."
Though they did catch up, cutting a 15-point halftime lead down to 9, the steam seemed to run out in the fourth quarter when the Eagles missed 14 shots from the field.
After Singer was able to enter the game, he became one of the more effective weapons at the Eagles' disposal, scoring a team-high 16 points and grabbing 7 rebounds. Juwan Sisco also came up big for Aurora Christian, scoring 8 points off the bench.
With a plethora of good teams at the tournament, McNamara knows that all it takes is one play to cause the script to flip and get his team ready for even tougher challenges down the line.
"I've said before that a team can go 4-0 or 0-4 here very easily. Everybody's got a little bit of talent and everyone knows what they're doing. I think the competition will be good for us in the long run."