PICTURED ABOVE: Luke Peters scored a career-high 24 points in Wheaton's 74-65 victory over Calvin on Saturday night.

Wheaton, Ill. - The Thunder men's basketball team stepped away from conference action again on Saturday night to record a 74-65 victory over Calvin at King Arena. For the fourth time this season, Wheaton turned the ball over 10 times or less, committing only eight turnovers while forcing 15 Calvin miscues. With the victory, Wheaton improves to 5-3 overall. Calvin falls to 3-5. Wheaton will travel to Alma next Saturday for its final game before Christmas.

Both teams struggled from the three-point line but shot well overall. The Thunder made only 25% (6-of-24) of its three-point attempts but shot 41% (25-61) from the field and 81.8% (18-of-22) from the free throw line. Calvin shot 18.8% (3-of-16) from the three-point line but managed to shoot 42.3% (22-52) from the field and 75% (18-of-24) from the charity stripe. The Knights held a narrow 37-34 rebounding edge with Wheaton holding the advantage 10-9 in offensive rebounds.

Calvin's offense was very efficient in the opening minutes of the game as the Knights built a 13-5 lead just five minutes into the action on the back of a 9-0 run. Trailing by seven just over seven minutes into the game, consecutive three-pointers by Reagan Jones and Ricky Samuelson cut the Calvin lead to 19-18. The lead would not stretch above five points in either direction for the next 30 minutes of game play.

Four straight points from Luke Peters and a Zack Kvam lay-up pushed Wheaton ahead 37-32 to reach the Thunder's biggest lead of the first half. Calvin would close the half strong and two late free throws cut Wheaton's lead down to 37-36 at halftime.

The Knights used a quick spurt to start the second half and take a 44-39 lead but again consecutive three-pointers, this time by Samuelson and Aston Francis (PICTURED RIGHT), gave the Thunder a one-point edge. The lead swung back and forth through the middle part of the second half until Cam Denney connected on a three-pointer that gave Calvin a 56-54 lead with 9:06 remaining. From that point, Wheaton would hold Calvin scoreless for the next five minutes while going on a 13-0 run to take the game's biggest lead at 66-56 with 4:05 to play.

Calvin quickly returned the favor, assembling a 7-0 run of its own to make it 66-63 with 2:56 left. The Knights would not manage another field goal the rest of the way and Wheaton iced the game from the free throw line, led by Kobe Eichelberger making all six of his free throw attempts over the final two minutes of play.

Luke Peters finished with a career-high 24 points to lead all scorers. Aston Francis poured in 18 points and Kobe Eichelberger recorded 12 points and a game-high nine rebounds. Cam Denney led the Knights with 19 points and Austin Bykerk finished with 15 points.