Thunder wins CCIW opener
As daggers go, this was hardly the most stylish.
But when Kent Raymond dribbled behind his back and sent a one-handed pass toward Wheaton College teammate Andy Wiele, something special was beginning.
Wiele grabbed the ball as it was heading out of bounds and sent a crisp pass to the top of the 3-point arc to Ben Panner, who drilled the long-range shot to put the Thunder ahead 67-62 with 34 seconds left.
"That was a big play," Wiele said. "I was kind of falling out of bounds and I saw Panner open at the top. I just sort of winged it to him and he knocked it down."
Carthage tried to rally one final time in both teams' CCIW opener but fell 70-64 at King Arena.
That any Wheaton College player would be applying a scoring coup de grace in the game looked uncertain three-quarters of the way through the game.
Carthage (5-6, 0-1) pulled from a 40-35 halftime edge and raced to a 55-39 lead six minutes into the half and Wheaton College (11-1, 1-0) took timeout.
"We just really weren't playing our defense," Wiele said. "We weren't as aggressive on the on-ball screens as we needed to be."
At that point Wheaton College's rally took shape, starting with an Andrew Jahns 3-pointer. Jahns, scoreless in the first half, scored 9 points in the second half.
But the scoring keys were Panner and Wiele. Panner scored 13 of his game-high 28 points in the second half, including a trio of 3-pointers.
"It was a great team effort and we were all going all-out," Panner said. "We had to do it. We were down 16. We started clicking all of a sudden."
Wiele had 11 of his 19 points in the second half and was a force rebounding. The Thunder outrebounded Carthage 33-28 in the game but grabbed 7 offensive rebounds in the second half. Wiele had 13 in the contest.
"Coach says that's my role," Wiele said. "I have to crash the boards offensively and defensively as much as I can. That's what I'm in there to do."
Wheaton College also shut down Steve Djurikovic in the second half. The Red Men freshman had 18 first half points but strong defense by Raymond limited Djurikovic to 2 second half points.
"You look at the box score and you don't see what an incredible game Kent Raymond had," Wheaton College coach Bill Harris said.
Raymond also scored 10 points, all in the first half.
"They tried to take (Raymond) away and we have four other options," Harris said. "They have maybe two. (Wiele's) getting double-doubles every night. They have to go and defend that. I thought he made pretty good decisions tonight."