Wheaton, Ill. - The Thunder men's basketball team, ranked #18 in the D3hoops.com preseason poll, opened its 2014-15 campaign in King Arena on Saturday night with an 80-66 victory over the Franklin College Grizzlies. A tightly contest affair throughout the first half, Wheaton took control of the game with a 12-2 run to take an eight-point edge that would be the slimmest advantage Wheaton would hold for the remainder of the game. Wheaton's 38-30 halftime lead ballooned to a 21-point lead late in the game before Franklin closed to the final gap of 14 points. Wheaton will be in action on Tuesday, when the Thunder travel to take on Defiance College.

15827Wheaton shot 26-55 (47.3%) from the field despite shooting just 3-11 (27.3%) from the three-point line. The Thunder made 25 of 30 (83.3%) free throw attempts. Franklin shot 23-57 (40.4%) from the field and made six of their 12 three-point attempts while shooting 14-17 (82.4%) from the charity stripe.

The opening half unfolded as a see-saw battle as Franklin jumped out to early leads of 9-4 and 16-9 before a 9-0 Thunder run gave Wheaton an 18-16 lead. The run was keyed by five points and a key block by Peter Smith as well as a steal and a jumper by freshman Murad Dillard. Following a couple of lead ties and lead changes, the Thunder turned a 24-22 deficit into a 36-26 lead behind the effort of Joel Smith who started the run with an old fashioned three-point play and and added two free throws and a three-pointer.

The Grizzlies were able to cut the lead to six with three minutes to play in the first half but a pair of free throws by Brayden Teuscher gave Wheaton a 38-30 edge at the hafltime break to close a half that saw six ties and four lead changes.

15828With the lead swinging between single and double digits in the early minutes of the second half, Luis Miller sparked the offense with a three-point play off a Caleb DeMoss assist to push the lead back to 11 with 14:57 to play. After a short Franlkin run cut the lead back to nine, Miller's lay-up again pushed it to 11, this time for good.

A 9-2 Thunder run pushed the lead to 17 at 67-50 with 6:29 to playbut the Grizzlies responded by cutting it down to 11 over the next minute. Wheaton answered by holding the Grizzlies scoreless from the field for the next five minutes while going on a 10-0 run that boosted the lead to 77-56 on a Michael Berg three-pointer with 2:54 to play. A DeMoss lay-up with 2:05 to play pushed it back to 21 but the Grizzlies scored eight of the game's last nine points to make the final score 80-66.

Brayden Teuscher led all scorers with a game-high 22 points including 8-8 from the free throw line. Luis Miller scored 15 points, Joel Smith put in 12 points to go with six rebounds and two steals and Michael Berg and Caleb DeMoss each scored 10 points with DeMoss adding nine assists and two steals. Peter Smith grabbed a game-high seven rebounds. Matt Niehoff led the Grizzlies with 14 points.

Wheaton will next be in action on Tuesday when the Thunder travel to take on Defiance College at 7 PM (EST).