Unstoppable Raymond lifts Wheaton to CCIW crown

Dean Prince's orders were simple, the task anything but.

The 6-foot North Central College guard picked up Wheaton senior Kent Raymond fullcourt Saturday night in Wheaton, hoping to stop the Thunder's All-America guard. The challenge proved too great, as Raymond scored 29 points to lead the Thunder to a 70-60 victory to clinch the CCIW championship.

"If you play Kent on the perimeter, he's going to take you inside, which he did. He did a great job on the post," Wheaton coach Bill Harris said. "If you take him inside, he'll take you outside. ... He's a great player. He's hard to guard."

"With an All-American and probably the best player in (Division III), you've got to throw a lot of different things at him to make him work for everything he gets," Cardinals guard Mitch Raridon said. "He's a great player. There's no way of ever stopping him and not letting him score. You just want to try to wear him down as the game goes on, which is what we tried to do with Dean picking him up fullcourt. It's tough. He hurt us in the end."

Actually, Raymond hurt North Central (16-8, 8-5) at both ends of the court. Defensively, the 6-3 guard picked up North Central's leading scorer, 6-5 Chris Drennan, in the low post. Drennan, averaging 16.5 points a game, finished with 6.

"We went to a different matchup, because we had tried to stop Chris Drennan before," Harris said. "So we said to Kent, 'All right, you're our All-American, he's their stud. Let's put stud vs. stud and see how it goes.' He did a great job."

"(Drennan) is a phenomenal post player," said Raymond, who had only defeated the Cardinals once before in his years with the Thunder (21-3, 10-3). "He plays really strong. He understands the game real well, but at the end of the day I think coach thought that my quickness would help me get around him in the post and deny him some entries. For the most part I think we did a pretty good job on him. I can't take full credit for that. It's a team defensive philosophy and it worked out well in the end."

North Central took a 32-31 lead at halftime in large part because Raridon scored 17 of his team-high 22 points, including three 3-pointers while the Thunder struggled from outside.

"I saw the inside game was struggling a little bit so I decided to be a little more aggressive on the offensive end and get some shots," Raridon said.

The Thunder scored the first 10 points of the second half to retake the lead and clutched it as if the conference title was at stake. Freshman forward Mark Adams, an Aurora Central Catholic product, picked up the scoring for the Cardinals, with all 12 of his points coming in the final 20 minutes.

"I thought Mark played extremely well," Cardinals coach Todd Raridon said. "His defense has improved. He's somebody we've kind of used a little bit here the last part of the season. He has the capability to score, as you saw. He gives us a different look out there that we haven't had. You'll see more of Mark Adams."

The Thunder found some extra energy when Jake Carwell was fouled while throwing down a crowd-pleasing dunk with 6:07 to go, a play that prompted teammate Andy Wiele to reach down and dust off Carwell's shoes for him.

"Jake Carwell played a great game, but especially on the defensive end," Harris said of the junior from Villa Park. "He was 9 for 11 at the line, but, yeah, the dunk was a great energizer. He also played great down here, rebounding and help defense, got a lot of deflections. He had an outstanding ballgame, no question."

Winning the league title means the Thunder will host the conference tournament next weekend. It's probable semifinal opponent is North Central, which saw its NCAA Tournament hopes fade with Saturday's loss.

"We're 0-2 this week against Elmhurst and Wheaton," Mitch Raridon said. "Hopefully, we can go 2-0 next week and make the postseason."