Bouncing back from Saturday night heartbreak, Wheeler (Marietta, Ga.) took down host 'Iolani, 73-50, Monday night to advance to today's fifth-place game of the 'Iolani Prep Classic.

The Wildcats will face Lexington (Ky.) Catholic at 5 p.m.; 'Iolani will play Mason County (Maysville, Ky.) at 3:30 p.m. for seventh place.

Junior forward Charles Mitchell scored a game-high 27 points for Wheeler, which lost to Dr. Phillips (Orlando, Fla.), 63-62, in Saturday night's quarterfinals. In that game, the Wildcats led, 62-61, but turned the ball over with 22 seconds remaining and watched Darius Andrews score the winning basket with 7.5 seconds left.

"Our guys played hard and it came down to execution -- we finally found a way to execute," Wheeler coach Doug Lipscomb said of yesterday's victory. " 'Iolani has a really good team and I was impressed with how they played against (No. 1-ranked) Oak Hill (Mouth of Wiilson, Va.). They were able to get a lot of open shots that just didn't fall."

That proved to be the case again yesterday, although the defending state champion Raiders did manage to stay close for the first nine minutes.

They trailed 12-11 after Josiah Sukumaran's free throw 34 seconds into the second period, but Mitchell then powered his way for six points as the Wildcats went on a 16-5 run to end the half with a 28-16 lead.

Wheeler stepped up the pace in the third period, forcing several turnovers that resulted in fast-break layups to help stretch it to 49-32 entering the fourth.

'Iolani could not get closer than 15 points the rest of the way.

"We tell our guys we always try to win in the heart and in the mind, and (the Wildcats) came out on top in both aspects today," Raiders coach Dean Shimamoto said. "It's disappointing, because this was an opportunity to play a great team and make it competitive. We played terrible in the first half, but we still were only down by 12. But we needed to play with passion, we cannot wait until we hit a shot to play with passion. We played with passion for only about four out of 32 minutes."

Derrick Evans added 13 points and Tevin Reeves 12 points for Wheeler. Gabriel Vega led 'Iolani with 13 points, Trevyn Tulonghari added 12 points and Sukumaran contributed 11 points.

The Raiders suffered a key injury when starting post Kainoa Scheer went down with a knee injury. He is expected to undergo an MRI examination today.

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