St. Joseph 76, Wheaton Academy 57:This is not Wheaton Academy’s first year in the St. Charles East Thanksgiving Tournament and it is not the first time the Warriors were matched up against a highly rated team from St. Joseph, so the Warriors knew what they were up against.

Unfortunately, knowing it and being able to do anything about it are two different things. The Chargers came out flying and opened a 20-point lead in the first quarter and cruised to a victory.

St. Joseph junior Evan Turner set the pace scoring 10 of his 16 points in the first quarter, a quarter that saw the Chargers (3-0) hit 8 of their first 9 shots from the field. Demetri McCamey, the game’s high scorer with 19 points, added 11 points in the first half as St. Joseph took a 46-21 led into the locker room.

The Warriors (0-3) were able to cut into the lead that approached 30 points in the second half behind sophomore guard Benjamin Euler, who scored all of his team-high 13 points in the second half. Jeremy Parker added 10 points, and seven other Warriors made it into the scoring column.

“I feel like in the second half we played with a little more enthusiasm,” said Wheaton Academy coach Andy Euler. “The negative thing of that is that in the first half we didn’t come out ready to play. We played them very well last year, it’s not like we’ve never seen these guys, so I can’t explain why we came out flat.

“In the second half we started running our passing game like we are supposed to, that is the other thing we haven’t been doing very well, but we started flashing the basket and getting some layups and in the first half we weren’t doing that.”

Coach Euler was able to come up with one reason for his team’s struggles against the Chargers.

“Obviously, they are very good,” he said.