Victory keeps Benet in ESCC race
The calendar said the second half of the East Suburban Catholic Conference boys basketball season had only just begun, but for Benet it was already do-or-die time as the Redwings hosted first-place Marist on Friday night.
Knowing a loss would have left them two games behind Marist and Notre Dame with only three to play, the Redwings announced their intention to battle the end with a 45-38 victory.
"Every win at this time of year, if you're in the conference race, is a big win," said Benet coach Gene Heidkamp. "We know every game matters and you can't overlook a team. It's an old cliché, one game at a time, as you come down to the final games of the conference season."
Two Colin Bonnett 3-pointers staked the Redwings (17-6, 5-1) to an early 8-4 lead, but Marist (18-6, 5-1) answered with 10-0 run to close the first quarter for a 14-8 lead. Jeremiah Ferguson had 4 points for the Redhawks in the run, but the killer was Malik Parker's 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Ferguson's 3-pointer gave Marist its biggest lead at 19-11 with six minutes left in the first half and the teams essentially traded scores from that point with two Chamar Hawkins free throws making it 25-17 with a minute left. The Redwings did draw within 25-19 at the half courtesy of Bonnett's driving layup in the final seconds, one of the few times Benet was able to breach Marists' defense over the first 16 minutes.
Bonnett's bucket turned out to be the offensive spark the Redwings needed. It lit the fuse for what would turn into a 20-4 run that turned the 8-point deficit into a 37-29 lead with two minutes remaining in the third quarter. All Marist could manage in that time was a pair of putback baskets from Kevin Lerma.
Dan Sobolewski was the Benet star during the run. He hit a trio of 3-pointers in the spurt, while Bonnett added another and James Dockery chipped in 5 points.
"Their 1-3-1 zone is always good and we weren't attacking it the way we were supposed to in the first half," Sobolewski said. "In the second half, we moved James Dockery to the top and me to the wing and I was just lucky to knock the shots down."
For Heidkamp, seeing Bonnett attack the Marist defense at the end of the half was the key to the offensive outburst.
"We were more aggressively offensively in the second half, not just settling for jump shots," he said. "Danny made the 3s, but they came on kickouts when we started to attack the lane."
The Redwings also turned the screws defensively as they limited the Redhawks to 5 baskets and 13 points in the second half. The closest the Redhawks got in the fourth quarter was 40-36 on Parker's three-point play with four minutes left, but they could manage only one more basket the rest of the way.