Balanced Aurora Christian tops Marmion
Balanced scoring and solid free-throw shooting down the stretch enabled Aurora Christian to fight off a furious fourth-quarter rally from Marmion Thursday night.
Johnathan Harrell, CJ Schutt and Ryan Suttle had 13 points each, and Jake Hanson added 10 as the Eagles (10-3, 3-1) earned a 64-55 Suburban Christian Conference Blue basketball triumph over the Cadets (8-7, 2-2) in Aurora.
“I looked in the scorebook and we’ve got four guys in double figures and another guy with nine (Ryan McQuade),” said Aurora Christian coach Steve Hanson. “That’s hard to defend if you get that every night because a big bucket can come from anybody.”
Aurora Christian appeared to be in control after Schutt’s 3-point play and a pair of free throws from Suttle gave the Eagles their largest lead of the night at 51-37 with 6:33 remaining.
Marmion, saddled by poor shooting most of the night, finally began to find the range in the fourth quarter.
Trailing 57-46 with 2:04 left, the Cadets rattled off 8 unanswered points in a 34-second span, highlighted by back-to-back 3-pointers from Jeff Garofalo (10 points) that trimmed the deficit to 3 at 57-54 with 1:30 remaining.
The Eagles, who made 16 of their 19 free-throw attempts in the fourth quarter, put the game away thanks to 3 free throws apiece from Hanson and Suttle.
“I thought we ran our pass and cut offense real well,” said Steve Hanson. “We got a couple easy looks and took them out of their trap, and then we made our free throws at the end. That’s a good formula.”
Alex Theisen scored a game-high 16 points for the Cadets, who were without leading scorer Pete Stefanski, who suffered a sprained ankle in last week’s holiday tournament semifinal at DeKalb.
Marmion coach Ryan Paradise expects Stefanski to be sidelined for another week.
“It all came down to getting stops and they did a real good job offensively of closing out the game,” said Paradise.
Colin Kavanaugh added 10 points for the Cadets, who shot just 35 percent from the field (22-of-62) and 21 percent from beyond the arc (6-of-28).
“We had an off-shooting night and it took us awhile to figure out that we weren’t hitting,” said Paradise. “We were trying to kind of shoot ourselves out of the funk in the first half and not really attack the paint. We started doing it in the second half but at that point it was too late.”
The game’s importance wasn’t lost on Schutt or the Eagles’ coaching staff.
“We’re tied for first place (with St. Francis) now so it was pretty huge,” said Schutt. “We knew what this game meant.”
“We knew it was going to be tough because they’re a good defensive team,” said Hanson. “It’s a big win for us. We protected our home turf and now we’re 3-1 in conference. That’s what we wanted to do.”