Aurora Christian turns back St. Edward
Jake Wolfe made sure St. Edward did not complete its epic comeback in the boys basketball game.
After watching the Green Wave erase a 16-point lead at the start of fourth quarter Tuesday night, Wolfe, an Aurora Christian junior point guard, converted a 3-point play with 15.4 seconds to play in the Eagles' season opener at the Burney Wilkie Classic.
The Wave threw the ball away with three seconds remaining in Aurora, and the Eagles' Tanner Dissell split 2 free throws to account for the 60-57 Aurora Christian victory.
St. Edward junior A.J. Franklin converted 2 free throws with 31.4 seconds remaining to give the Wave its only lead of the game at 56-55.
"As soon as he made the free throw to put them up, I was like, 'I'm going to get the ball and am going to score,'" said Wolfe, who tied Wave guard Kelvin Cortez-Harvey for game-scoring honors with 26 points.
"Brock (Harner) gave me the ball, and I saw an open lane."
Throughout the game, Wolfe had repeatedly beaten his defender off the dribble for slashing scores. The Eagles' standout junior did it once more, drawing a foul in the lane as he converted the game-winning score.
The Wolfe heroics put a damper on a remarkable comeback by the Wave in general and Cortez-Harvey in particular.
Trailing 50-34 to start the final quarter, the Wave scored the first 15 points of the fourth. Cortez-Harvey scored 16 of his team-high total in the quarter.
In a defining sequence, Cortez-Harvey had a friendly bounce for one 3-pointer, only to steal the ball seconds later for a step-back 3-pointer that reduced the Eagles' lead to 50-47 with under five minutes to play.
"The first three was luck," Cortez-Harvey said. "I got a lucky bounce. I got the steal, and they were kind of covering the basket. I didn't want to force a shot. My shooting has really improved."
"He was quick," Wolfe said of Cortez-Harvey. "He was the change of the game for them."
Aurora Christian (1-0) had no issues whatsoever with first-game jitters to open the game.
The Eagles were 5-for-8 from beyond the arc without committing a turnover in scoring 21 of the first 26 points of the game.
Cortez-Harvey was the only player to score for St. Edward in the first quarter. But Franklin resuscitated the Wave with 3 consecutive 3-pointers in the second quarter.
"We can't be a one-man, one-dimensional team," Wave coach P.J. White said. "We have to have multiple people scoring."
"That's a trademark of P.J.'s teams," Aurora Christian coach Dan Beebe said of the Wave resilience. "We kind of got a little tight (in the fourth quarter)."
Franklin finished with 15 points for St. Edward (2-3).