Simeon tops Benet for Pontiac crown

In order for someone to topple powerful Simeon in a game this season, two things are probably going to have to happen.

First, an opponent will need to catch the Wolverines on a night when they might not be in the midst of one of their better efforts.

Secondly, those in search of an upset will have to put together an extremely cohesive effort and extremely limit or completely eliminate mistakes.

Benet got those two things during the second half of the Pontiac Holiday Tournament Championship of Friday night, but the foibles of the first half proved to be too much to overcome as Simeon outlasted a determined and previously undefeated Benet 52-49 to win its second consecutive Pontiac title. The title was the 11th overall under veteran Simeon coach Robert Smith, who is retiring at the conclusion of the season.

It was the first loss of the season for the Redwings (16-1) who have now come up short in three tries at the championship trophy at Pontiac.

"I'm really proud of our guys," Benet coach Gene Heidkamp said. "We were dead in the water in the first half and played about as poorly as we could play. We were six for 27 in the first half and couldn't stop them defensively, but our guys kept plugging along and plugging along and they never quit. We got it down to one but couldn't get over the hump.

"I give them a lot of credit, they (Simeon) are the No. 1 team in the state for a reason."

After Benet dug itself a substantial hole in the first half, Benet forward Nikola Abusara did all he could to revive the Redwing hopes, as Abusara scored nine third-quarter points to get the game to a somewhat manageable position as Simeon led by 11 at the end of three.

Benet kept pushing by scoring 10 of the first 12 points of the fourth quarter and pulled to within 44-42 with 2:13 to play, but Simeon's battle-tested performers continued to parry the advances when it mattered the most. A basket from Jashon Liggett, who played sparingly in the game, kept the lead at four (46-42) and when Benet answered with a basket from Brady Kunka, Simeon responded again with a tough runner from Jalen Griffith, who led Simeon scorers with 17 points.

After a Benet miss on the other end, Sam Lewis threw down a dunk that stretched the lead back to six (50-44), but a Brayden Fagbemi 3-pointer kept the window slightly cracked open.

It got wider seconds later when Benet forced a turnover and Sam Driscoll was in the right spot at the right time, scooping in a layup to winnow the Simeon lead to 50-49 with 13 seconds to play.

But Lewis (15 points) knocked down free throws with Benet forced to foul and a 3-point attempt for the Redwings wouldn't fall.

None of that looked even remotely possible after a dominant Simeon first half.

Simeon scored the first five points of the game but Benet answered that salvo by scoring the next five points to knot things up. The Wolverines rattled off the final 10 points of the first quarter and then rattled off a 14-4 run to start the second quarter to carry a 29-13 lead into the half.

Abusara led Benet with 17 points and was joined on the all-tournament team by Fagbemi, who finished with 13. Kunka (nine points, eight rebounds) was a second-team pick.

Heidkamp couldn't help but wonder what might have been had his team played even slightly better than it did in the first 16 minutes.

"You know what we thought we had a pretty good team coming in here. And maybe that validated it," Heidkamp said. " But we came here to win, make no mistake, and we knew we were playing Simeon but we were disappointed in the outcome. There's no moral victory here. And we had played so poorly and if we just played a little bit better in the first half, the day might have been different."

Semifinal:

In the first quarter of Friday's Pontiac Holiday Tournament semifinal, Benet forward and Dartmouth recruit Niko Abusara threw down a thunderous dunk over a pair of Joliet West defenders.

And although the game was far from decided at that point, Abusara dunk was more about establishing that the Redwings were not about to back down from the highly-touted Tigers.

"It was surreal. I just got the ball in transition. The play before I had just missed a layup or something and I didn't take it as hard as I could," Abusara said. "So when I got it the second time, I just went up with straight power and speed and completely dunked it. We've been preparing for this moment for the entire year, we've been wanting Joliet West. We needed that energy so we could get that confidence up. I couldn't even believe that I did it. It was great."

Buoyed by a near perfect first-half of offensive and defensive execution, Benet held off a second-half push from Joliet West in claiming a 56-47 victory to reach the Pontiac Tournament final for the third time in program history and its first appearance since 2016.

Simeon defeated Curie in the other semifinal 67-58.

The first half saw a nearly flawless effort from Benet.

The Redwings broke down the Tigers with a series of screens and back cuts that often left them with high percentage scoring opportunities. On the opposite end, Joliet West simply couldn't find its offensive rhythm, and its typical stopgap maneuver for sparking the offense, the Fears brothers, combined for just two field goals and five total points in the first half against a Benet defense that wouldn't give an inch.

"Our guys learned their lesson from yesterday. Yesterday we were not the aggressor and we played very passively," Benet coach Gene Heidkamp said. "Today we knew if we were going to beat a team like that we were going to have to play with a whole different level of toughness and intensity.

"And I thought our guys played really well from the start."

And based on how things were going, Benet's 28-16 first half lead looked insurmountable.

Joliet West did manage to climb back into the game largely due to a 10-point third quarter from sophomore Jeremiah Fears. The Tigers closed the quarter with a 10-3 scoring run to cut the Benet advantage down to just 36-32.

Joliet West then got the Benet lead down to one on three separate occasions, but the Tigers never were able to completely get over the hill. The final instance of a one-point separation at 42-41 sparked a Benet an 11-3 run that sent the Redwings into the championship game.

Braden Fagbemi led Benet with 14 points, leading three double figure Redwing scorers that also included Brady Kunka (13 points) and Abusara (10 points). Abusara and Kunka also collected nine and eight rebounds respectively as Benet held a 26-22 advantage on the glass.

Justus McNair led all scorers with 15 points for Joliet West, while Jeremiah Fears finished with 12 and Jeremy Fears chipped in 11. A usual source of offensive productivity for the Tigers, the 3-point line, also really abandoned them as they connected on just 1-of-14 3-point shots in the game.

"We won't make excuses, we had more than enough time to rest and Benet came in on short rest after playing a very competitive game against Bloom and we just didn't do the best job we could do as coaches and players to go out and effect that game right away," Joliet West coach Jeremy Kreiger said.

"But what I loved was our resiliency and our willingness to fight and get it back to one possession so many times so many times in a row, but we couldn't quite get that next bucket and couldn't quite take the lead."