Timothy Christian 51, Aurora Christian 35

The Aurora Christian girls basketball team came out just the way coach Dan Stone wanted them to against Private School League rival Timothy Christian Friday by jumping out to an early lead behind a couple of hoops from senior Lauren Heck.

Unfortunately, the Eagles started to turn the ball over and the shots stopped falling as the Trojans ended the first half with a 24-6 run and were able to maintain a double-digit lead the entire second half and post a 51-35 victory in Aurora.

"We came out with great intensity in the beginning of the game," said Stone. "We were active in getting rebounds and we looked pretty sharp but then I think we got a little gassed."

The Eagles were without two starters, one due to illness and the other to a family emergency, and had just 6 usual varsity players in uniform.

Timothy Christian (12-9, 4-2) junior Katie Dirkse single handedly erased the Eagles' early lead by scoring 7 straight of her team-high 15 points late in the first quarter. In the second quarter she got help from Shannon McNeil who had 12 points in the game, pulled down 9 rebounds, handed out 5 assists and had a couple of steals in playing a fantastic overall floor game.

"We're comfortable pushing the ball up the floor," said McNeil.

Heck did all she could to bring the Eagles (10-10, 4-3) back in the second half as scored 12 of her game-high 18 points but Timothy Christian always had the answer as eight different Trojans scored to keep the lead at a comfortable margin.

"We are interchangeable parts," said McNeil.

"Our focus was to get back, we knew Heck was going to shoot the ball so we tried to stop her and make someone else do something spectacular," said Timothy Christian head coach Ryan DeKoekkoek.

Spectacular is not exactly the work for the Eagles' performance on the offensive end as they shot under 30 percent for the game and committed 22 turnovers.