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Benet recommits to defense

Free-flowing offense is fun. But as long as Gene Heidkamp is Benet's boys basketball coach, games are won or lost by defense.

In Saturday's championship bracket nightcap of Wheaton Warrenville South's fourth Martin Luther King Tournament, Waukegan forced an up-tempo, 3-launching first quarter. The Redwings complied and 42 combined points later - actually before that, by Heidkamp's first timeout trailing by 2 - things changed.

"Coach was not happy with the defense, to say the least," Benet forward Dan Sobolewski said.

Once recommitted to the grind, Benet established a firm upper hand in a 72-47 win over the Bulldogs.

"They're just such skilled players and they play so well together without any thought other than what's the best thing to do on this possession right now. That's why they just keep beating people," said Waukegan coach Ron Ashlaw.

Benet (15-2) began Saturday with a win over Schaumburg and advanced to a 12:30 p.m. Monday semifinal against Stevenson, which beat Metea Valley and Downers Grove South on Saturday.

The 11 a.m. semifinal pits Hinsdale South - which toppled WW South 45-42 on Brian Kern's 3 at the buzzer - against Notre Dame. Benet beat Notre Dame 62-45 on Thursday in East Suburban Catholic Conference play. The title game is at 7 p.m.

After Benet's Jason Malonga, James Dockery and Jack Nolan helped earn a 22-20 lead over Waukegan in a track meet first quarter, Waukegan (9-9) got hassled into 3-of-15 second-quarter shooting to the Redwings' 8 of 15.

"I guess it was entertaining to watch," Heidkamp conceded of seeing things like Nolan trade 3s with Waukegan's Bryant Brown, one of three key Bulldogs freshmen.

"It wasn't necessarily the style we play usually," Heidkamp said. "We were able to score some points, but we weren't able to stop them. Once we started to put some stops together and were able to still score a little bit we got a little bit of separation."

Outscoring the Bulldogs 20-7 in the quarter, Benet led 42-27 at halftime and 50-27 midway through the third quarter. From Brian Batina to Brendan Walsh, all 18 Redwings played.

Benet's Liam Lyman notched all 10 of his points in the second quarter and Nolan added 7 more of his 16. Overall Malonga's 20 points led all players. Carson Newsome led Waukegan with 17.

"This year we have a lot of good on-ball defenders, so people are not just blowing right past us," Malonga said. "If they do we have the personnel to be able to get in the gap and make the second play out to the man, so we've been playing really good, solid defense."

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