Porto's career-high 27 points lead Stevenson by Lake Zurich

When you're on, sometimes you're really on.

Stevenson junior guard Evan Porto could tell long before tip-off Friday night that his switch was flipped firmly into the on position.

"It started at shootaround today," Porto said. "Me and my teammates had a lot of energy and that brought momentum to the game."

Make that momentum times 3.

Porto was on point from behind the 3-point line right out of the gate in a North Suburban Conference boys basketball game at Lake Zurich. He hit three 3-pointers in a row without a miss to score Stevenson's first 9 points of the game.

It must have been contagious because Stevenson rolled up a total of 11 3-pointers on the game en route to a 63-57 win.

Porto, who hit 4-of-5 3-pointers in the first quarter alone and 7-of-10 in the game, finished with a career-high 27 points as Stevenson moved to 7-3 on the season.

"No, but I think it should be like this all year," Porto said with a smile when asked if Stevenson typically takes so many 3-pointers. "We do shoot a lot in practice and we have a lot of good shooters."

Jaison Williams (2), Andrew Chieng (1) and Jaden Evans (1) also had 3-pointers for Stevenson.

"I think (11 team 3-pointers) might be a team record," said longtime Stevenson assistant coach Paul Swan.

Swan and assistant coach Chandler Simon were standing in for head coach Pat Ambrose, who missed his second straight game for unspecified reasons. Ambrose's son Evan, a senior point guard and starter for the Patriots, also missed the game.

"We locked in today," said Simon, who graduated from Stevenson in 2012 and played for Ambrose.

"We got the shots up in the walk-through and the warm-ups. We came ready to play today. We typically don't shoot that many 3s and we typically don't make that many but we do have shooters and it was what was open against their zone (defense).

"I always tell Evan, 'you're a good shooter, have the confidence and play with it.' This is the best I've seen him play. Tonight, I was drawing up plays for him constantly."

Stevenson, up by 10 at halftime and by as many as 19 in the second half, also got double-figures from Williams and Darius Clemons, each of whom had 10 points.

Lake Zurich, which opened the fourth quarter with a press and a 14-2 run to cut its deficit to 7 points with about three minutes left, got 13 points from Brady Sykes and 10 points from Nick Pezzella.

The Bears are now 0-6 on the season.

"We knew that Porto could shoot it and that was on our report," Lake Zurich coach Terry Coughlin said. "They did a really good job of splitting our zone and we kind of got out of sorts."

"But I'm really proud of our kids. We're really inexperienced and we've improved so much from Game One to where we are today. We'll get better and we'll use this as a learning experience."