Wheaton teaches Broncos a Lesson

How a team plays at the start of a game is every bit as important as how it plays down the stretch.

The Walther Lutheran boys basketball team learned such a lesson after a 69-61 loss against PSL rival Wheaton Academy Friday night .

The Broncos certainly didn't look ready to play when the basketball went up in the air, shooting a frigid 3-of-16 from the floor in the opening eight minutes. Two of the baskets came in the final 27 seconds. The opposite was true of Wheaton Academy, which bolted out to a 17-4 lead with 47.1 seconds to play in the first quarter after running off 11 straight points.

"We just lacked intensity in the beginning and Wheaton did a lot of thing well early," said Walther coach Bob Koehne. "When you have to dig out of a 13-point deficit early, it's tough to do against a good team. We talked before the game about holding this team in the 50s. If we did that we win."

The Warriors shot 50 percent (15-of-30) from the floor in the opening half.

"We're trying to discipline our offense," said Wheaton Academy coach Paul Ferguson. "We got some easy buckets inside when we ran it."

Koehne said, "They always shoot well. We didn't do a very good job getting through some screens and they had some wide open shots."

The Broncos (7-7, 3-2) finally showed some life after Koehne burned a timeout nine seconds into the third quarter. Walther returned to the floor and proceeded to run off seven straight points to cut the deficit to 35-31. Five of the points were scored by Jeremy James, who had a team-high 18 points.

The Broncos had another mini-spurt of six points to whittle the Wheaton Academy (7-8, 3-0) lead down to 42-39 after baskets by Cedric Collins (10 points), James and Brandon Smith (6 points) with 2 minutes 45 seconds to play in the third quarter. That turned out to be as close as the Broncos would get the remainder of the evening.

Wheaton Academy put the lead back into double digits at 61-51 with 2:11 to play after a 3-pointer by Benjamin Euler (23 points) and a bucket by Tim Rusthoven. The Warriors iced the win by hitting all eight of their free-throw attempts in the final 72 seconds.

"We did not take a lot of good shots," Koehne said. "We rushed a lot of shots under the basket and there was no need for it because they did not have a shot-blocker. We needed to take our time and spread the floor, and let the guards penetrate. When we do that we are hard to stop."

Walther's 6-foot-7 senior center Fred Rose (16 points, 15 rebounds) scored half of his points from the foul line.

"Paul Werkema, Jared Cochrum and Mike Lindstedt were key for us because they battled Rose and really made him work for things," Ferguson said.

The Broncos had another strong second half on Saturday night and emerged with a 62-47 win over Rockford Christian Life. Walther put 45 points on the scoreboard in the second half after scoring just 17 in the opening 16 minutes of play.