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Sports

Boys Basketball: Stagg Rains 3s Down on Oak Lawn

Chargers pour in nine 3-pointers and blow game open with 21-0 first-half scoring run.

Stagg senior Darius Draper found himself on the bench for the entire fourth quarter of Tuesday's boys basketball game at Oak Lawn. His work was done.

Draper drained back-to-back three-pointers late in the first quarter to ignite a 21-0 run that covered nearly 7 minutes of the first and second quarters and helped Stagg blast Oak Lawn 66-37.

Oak Lawn (7-9) took an 8-6 lead with 2:25 left in the first quarter on a field goal by senior Anthony Johnson. But the Spartans wouldn't change their single digit on the scoreboard until Johnson made a free throw with 3:37 left in the first half, which made it a 27-9 contest.

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Draper's first three-pointer put the Chargers ahead 9-8. His next one seemingly deflated the Spartans. Senior guard Scott Lyons leaped out of bounds to save an offensive rebound and Draper made the Spartans pay dearly when he connected once again from beyond the arc.

Senior point guard Dan Ahern followed with a three-pointer before Draper made his third three-pointer in an 82-second span. Brett Kaiser closed the first quarter with a long field goal from just inside the arc to give Stagg a 20-8 lead.

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"I still don't understand why teams come out and zone us," Stagg coach John Daniels said. "I like seeing zone, just because we can control who shoots it where we want it, and with man it's harder."

Except for Kaiser's bucket, all of Stagg's first quarter points came on three-pointers (4) and three-point plays (2).

"We were just playing defense and taking it one possession at a time," Draper said. "We got our stops and just scored."

Sean Dwyer joined the three-point party, getting the Chargers started just 17 seconds into the second quarter. The Chargers scored the first seven points of th quarter before Johnson split his free throws to end the 21-0 run.

"It was frustrating from a couple of standpoints," Oak Lawn coach Scott Atkins said. "They were a step quicker to the ball on loose balls, and I thought they wanted the ball more than us in the first half."

Draper put the finishing touches on his 19-point performance, sinking his fifth and final three-pointer a few seconds before the first-half buzzer. He didn't score in the third quarter and didn't play in the fourth quarter.

Ahern scored eight of his 14 points in the second half for the Chargers as the two combined to torch Oak Lawn with their eight three-pointers and 33 points. The senior said patience was a big reason why the team had such success putting the ball in the hoop.

"When you feel it, you want to shoot early," he said. "But you realize that later you're going to get an ever better shot with a better chance of it going in."

Kortez Bridge (10 points), Lyons (8 points), Sean Dwyer (7 points), Kaiser (6 points) and Ryan Dahleen (6 rebounds) also came up big for Stagg.

"I thought the assists were good, and we probably had at least 20 tonight as a team," Daniels said. "I thought Kortez, Scotty (Lyons) and Kaiser did a nice job of pulling the zone in and these guys knew (Ahern and Draper) were shooters and came out to try to stop them, but the other guys forced them to respect the basketball."

Johnson was the lone player for Oak Lawn to reach double digits, finishing his night with 10 points. Jon Matthews chipped in with eight points.

"We played harder in the second half, but when you're down 23 at a halftime, it's too big of a hole to climb out of against a disciplined team like Stagg," Atkins said. "We had Ahern and Draper scouted and did a poor job of getting out on them. We didn't get them to put the ball on the floor and they made us pay."

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