St. Edward falls to Joliet Catholic
It has been a trying week for both the St. Edward and Joliet Catholic Academy boys basketball teams at the 6th Annual Burney Wilkie Classic Tournament at Aurora Christian.
Both teams entered Saturday's night contest sporting 0-3 tourney play records.
JCA finished the tournament by finally breaking into the win column with a 60-34 win over the Green Wave.
The Hilltoppers' defensive effectively stymied St. Edward's inside game and forced it to rely on its outside shooting. The 3-pointers were not falling for the Green Wave, going 6 for 16 from beyond the arc.
Joliet's ability to limit St. Edward (2-6) from scoring in the paint, also kept it off the free throw line. The Green Wave made only 3 trips to the charity stripe during the game.
"We had a tough time no matter where we were trying to get the ball. Their team was stronger, bigger and faster than us at every position. Obviously that makes it a hard one to win," said St. Edward coach P.J. White.
"It's been a long week. We've held opponents to an average of 44 points a game, probably the lowest average in the tournament and we lose 3 one-possession games so tonight became huge as far as I didn't know how the kids were going to react to that," said Joliet coach Joe Gura. "And they came out with stellar defense, the best defensive performance of the week."
St. Edward trailed by 5 after the first quarter, 20-15.
The Green Wave defense limited Joliet (1-3) to only 9 points in the second quarter but its offense went cold, going almost six minutes without a basket.
A Kelvin Cortez-Harvey layup with 2:02 left in the half, broke the dry spell. The senior guard finished the night with 16 points. St. Edward trailed 29-18 at the half.
The Green Wave endured another scoring drought in the third quarter, scoring only 2 points in the first 7 minutes.
"It wasn't terrible for awhile but we go into spurts where we don't do anything," White said. "You have to give them credit because they were picking up their pressure defensively and we couldn't do anything so that's something we have to work on."
An 8 point scoring spurt in the last minute of the quarter on baskets by Steve Poremba (6 points), A.J. Franklin (7 points) and Cortez-Harvey cut into Joliet's lead, but the Hilltoppers started the final quarter with 17-point margin, 45-28.
A balanced Joliet attack put three Joliet starters in double figures. Jake Surin scored a game-high 17 points. Donovan Finch tallied 13 and Pete Ragen notched 12.
"The team started playing offensively like we know we can. We talked today about being patient on offensive. Before we weren't scoring because we were trying too hard to score," Gura said. "My message all week was just play ball, you don't have to do anything special. They finally relaxed and did that tonight."