Just like football season

Roberts dishes out 11 assists as Eagles roll over Royals

Just 11 days after committing to Wheaton College to play quarterback, Aurora Christian senior Jordan Roberts got his passing back on track on the basketball court Tuesday.

Roberts dished out a season-high 11 assists to help the Eagles (11-12) roll to a 75-50 non-conference win over Hinckley-Big Rock. In the third quarter, he assisted on the first three Aurora Christian baskets of the half as the Eagles built a lead as large 27 while inching closer to the .500 mark for the season.

"He did a nice job of finding people," Aurora Christian coach Marc Davidson said. "He had 11 assists, a season-high for him, and he did a real nice job of finding guys in transition."

H-BR (14-10) did a nice job of hanging around early, cutting the Eagles' lead to 16-14 to start the second quarter. A big part of the reason was rebounding. Early on, H-BR had plenty of offensive rebound chances, but it could not convert on many of them. By that time, Christian improved its rebounding and wound up taking a 35-25 lead at the half. In the game, the Eagles had a commanding 46-23 edge on the boards.

"We packed the lane on them early because of their height advantage, and our rebounding was there," H-BR coach Bill Sambrookes said. "They countered it with good outside shooting, and they pulled us out of the lane. That's how basketball goes. If they don't hit those shots, we stay inside, they keep missing, it changes."

The Eagles also wanted to get out and run more in the first half, but were unable to thanks to the fact that H-BR got to the line nine times -- and hit eight -- which slowed down the Eagles' attack. After they started getting some stops, however, the deeper and quicker Eagles were able to race up and down the court to take control of the game.

"I think we wore them down a little bit," Davidson said. "We tried from the beginning to push the ball. We didn't do as much of that in the first half as I wanted to. I thought we got some stops in the third quarter and were able to push it and get some easy ones in transition."

Aurora Christian got huge contributions off the bench. The Eagles reserves scored a total of 36 points, led by Jawanza Wright, who scored a team-high 15. They bench group was 14-of-26 from the field.

"Jawanza came in and scored for us a little bit," Davidson said. "We had some good energy off the bench. I think we can go 10 deep very easily, and that's a real plus for us."

The Eagles have two more games remaining before heading to the Class 2A Genoa-Kingston Regional in two weeks. By that time, the Eagles hope to be 13-12 and ready to take on Plano in the first round.

"Right now, I think we're a better team than our record shows," Roberts said. "We'll just try to finish up our last two games with great emotion."

Aurora Christian 75, Hinckley-Big Rock 50