Wheaton Academy wins with defense and the dish

Wheaton Academy did just about everything it wanted to do Saturday night in West Chicago.

It played great defense, holding St. Francis to just 11 first-half points.

It played unselfishly, dishing out assists on 15 of its 21 field goals.

And Wheaton Academy defeated the Spartans, 59-46 in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the Warrior Dome.

"It's been an emphasis for us all year," Wheaton Academy coach Paul Ferguson. "We know we can score, but we're a much improved team defensively. We showed it tonight. We played great defense."

The key, Ferguson said, was Chris Lesner's defense on St. Francis' Larry Murison, holding the 6-foot-3 senior to 9 points.

"Chris Lesner played a tremendous game defensively, absolutely worked his tail off out there," Ferguson said.

"We just didn't shoot the ball real well," added St. Francis coach Sean Healy, whose team made 24 percent of its shots through the first three quarters. "Obviously, you're going to want to go after their bigs to a degree, go after (Tim) Rusthoven and (Luke) Johnson and attack the rim. But you're going to have to knock some perimeter shots out when you're facing 6-foot-9, 6-9 and 6-5. And we had good looks. They just weren't dropping."

Lesner also collected 10 points at the offensive end, most of them with some nice cuts to the basket and a pass from a teammate.

Two of those assists came from Rusthoven, who was more likely to be on the receiving end of a slick pass. The 6-9 senior struck for 26 points and 11 rebounds.

Fourth-ranked Wheaton Academy (16-1) came out of halftime with a 24-11 lead and built the margin to 24 points with 3:26 to play in the fourth quarter.

"We just started playing well, being patient, working it inside and really it worked for us a lot," Rusthoven said.

The teams emptied their benches, but someone forgot to tell the St. Francis reserves the game was decided. They cut the Wheaton Academy lead to 53-45 with 45 seconds to go on a Kevin Fassnacht 3-pointer.

"My guys off the bench, I'm really proud of them," Healy said. "I just apologized to them because the fact I was even thinking about bringing back our starters was ridiculous. Those five guys out there deserved to stay out there.

"One of my more prouder moments of coaching is watching them force coach Ferguson to have to put back his starters. I was just so pleased. I was really happy for those five guys."

St. Francis fell to 7-11 with the nonconference loss.