Daily Herald, Chris Cultino

St. Charles East is hosting its 47th annual Thanksgiving tournament, and you would think by now it would have learned to be better hosts.

The Saints jumped on Wheaton Academy right from the opening tip and never relented.

St. Charles East led 7-0 after the first two minutes of play and had allowed the Warriors to take only one shot. At the end of the first quarter the Saints had a 17-point lead on 12-of-15 shooting from the field.

Unfortunately for Wheaton Academy the Saints never really did cool off, shooting 67 percent for the game, including 6 for 10 from 3-point range.

“We just came out ready to go,” said Saints junior center Mike Bertrand. “We wanted to get off to a good start and take it to them.”

Bertrand was a big part of that good start, making all 5 of his shots in the first quarter and scoring 15 points on the game. Junior point guard Vince Frede also got off to a hot start, knocking down a couple of first-quarter 3-pointers on his way to 15 points.

Frede was in control of St. Charles East’s running game that resulted in several easy baskets as the Saints beat the Warriors down the floor.

“That is why we brought those guys up as sophomores last year,” said Saints coach Brian Clodi. “So they could experience it, know what it is about to be in games at this level. Wheaton Academy is a good club, they are going to beat a lot of teams. (Warriors coach) Andy (Euler) does a great job with his team, we were just the aggressors tonight and it paid off.”

“They outhustled us and they were more physical than us,” Euler said. “The refs allowed physical play and it is up to us respond to their physical play. We did absolutely nothing of what we’ve practiced. There were a couple of spurts where we ran our offense, played decent defense and then we would come down and just throw the ball up and they would come down and get an easy one. They played very well and we played rather silly.”

Senior Dan Kohlhagen stopped the last of Wheaton Academy’s spurts with consecutive steals for uncontested layups after the lead had been cut to 50-36. Kohlhagen scored a team-high 16 points in the game while guarding the Warriors’ leading scorer, Jeremy Parker, who had a game-high 17 points.

Wheaton Academy continues tournament play against Prospect at 5 p.m. today.