Posted/Modified on Wednesday, March 1, 2006 8:11 PM

(Daily Herald) For a team to get on the type of roll that the Kaneland boys basketball team is on — winning seven games in a row — it has to get contributions from a lot of places.

In an opening-round Class AA regional game at Geneva against Wheaton Academy on Monday, that was certainly the case for the Knights.

With captain and leading scorer Brad Harner on the bench with foul trouble, Kaneland fell behind the Warriors early. But junior Ryan Wagner came off the bench to have a career performance, scoring a game-high 26 points on 10-for-12 shooting from the field to lead Kaneland in a 75-65 victory.

“Since Christmas, we haven’t had to rely on one player,” Kaneland coach Brian Rea said. “For 2¨ seasons we’ve had to rely on one player. If they were hot, we were hot. If they were not, we were not. So it’s been really nice to have 5, 6, 7, 8 guys to throw out there that can do spectacular things on any given night.

“The way that Wheaton Academy plays, that plays right into Ryan Wagner’s game. He’s long and lanky, he can score around the basket. Our wheel was working, and we were getting a lot of baskets inside. They didn’t switch on it and, when we executed, we were hard to stop.”

“(Wagner’s) a weird athlete,” said teammate Boone Thorgesen, who had 16 points in the game. “He doesn’t look like one, but he can play. He has long arms and he’s unstoppable taking the ball to the hole.”

“Our offense revolves around Brad,” Wagner said. “So when he does go out, we have to have other people step up, and me and Boone did it tonight.”

Thorgesen and Wagner picked up the pace for Kaneland (15-12) midway through the first quarter. The Warriors had jumped out to an 11-4 lead after Jeremy Parker hit one of his trio of 3-pointers, but then Wagner finished a 3-point play the old fashioned way to begin what would turn out to be a 12-2 run by the Knights to end the first quarter.

Thorgesen had 7 of those points, including a 3-pointer at the buzzer that gave the Knights the lead for good.

“They were up like 7 and Brad was gone,” Thorgesen said. “He’s our leading scorer, so I thought I needed to pick it up, take care of his scoring and just started taking it to the hole. They didn’t get back as fast as they could have and it was open for a couple layups.”

“Boone was very aggressive and he’s our vocal leader, tons of heart. He got us going with that 3-pointer at the buzzer,” Rea added. “He was jumping around, he pumps everybody else up. He did a great job, he played tough, made a lot of tough baskets and good decisions, I’m very proud of him.”

Harner came back in the second half to score 15 points, as the Knights built their lead double digits, ending the third quarter leading 52-42.

Wagner ended any thoughts Wheaton Academy (16-12) had of making a comeback by scoring 12 points in the final quarter.

“Kaneland did a great job,” Wheaton Academy coach Andy Euler said. “They just drove on us like crazy. We just couldn’t stop their drives. They did a nice job running their offense, they put their head down and went to the hole and we had no help and we just didn’t do a good job defensively. We’ve been a good defensive team for the most part but tonight we weren’t.”

Jason VanderVeen led the Warriors in scoring with 13 points, Parker had 11 points and Nate Williams finished with 10 points.

Kaneland plays No. 2 seed Batavia tonight at 7:30 at Geneva.

“Win or lose tomorrow night, that is who we wanted to play,” Rea said. “If we win, it’s the biggest win we’ve had. If we don’t, we go out against the No. 10 team in the state. It’s going to be a great atmosphere for these kids to play in and they seem to rise to the occasion.

“Batavia will come out and play unbelievable. They will try to put us away real quick, but we know what to expect. We won’t be intimidated one bit.”

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