Two-and-a-half minutes into Benet’s Saturday night affair with Metea Valley, Benet coach Gene Heidkamp took time to implore one thing of his team.
Stop relying too much on jump shots and run the offense.
While Heidkamp’s advice would eventually be heeded to the tune of 18 layups, the only two threes Benet did hit against Metea Valley, courtesy of Danny Sobolewski, got the offense going enough to build a working margin on the way to pulling out a 58-54 victory over Metea Valley.
Sobolewski’s back-to-back triples early in the second turned the Redwings’ one-point lead into a seven-point lead as the Redwings never trailed while leading by as many as 13 points late in the third.
“The two three-pointers definitely did get me going. I had a good pass from Cameron (Graves) and a good pass from Colin (Bonnett) that got me going,” said Sobolewski, who paced the Redwings with a team-high 16 points.
For Heidkamp, the contributions of Sobolewski against the Mustangs went beyond what the 6-foot-4 junior did on the offensive end for Benet (11-5).
Sobolewski took five charges on the defensive end of the floor to help stave a late Metea Valley (7-11) charge.
Behind Ron Edwards’ game-high 19 points, which came off the heels of scoring 15 in a victory over Hinsdale South earlier on Saturday, the Mustangs closed to within three points on five different occasions in the fourth.
“Danny’s a good player. I don’t know what else to say. I know that’s a pretty generic quote, but Danny does a lot of things,” Heidkamp said. “Danny guarded the biggest guy on the other team both games (Saturday), guarded a really good player from Downers South and guarded (Mark Konkle), who’s much bigger and stronger than he is.
“He guarded (Joe Mooney) from Notre Dame (Thursday) and did a nice job, held him to eight points. The other thing that he does and I think it’s a big part of the game, so I think it’s something to mention … but Danny took five charges (against Metea Valley). How many kids you see take five charges in a high school game? That’s pretty selfless.”
Benet held Konkle to nine points for Metea Valley, the same total he had earlier in the day against Barret Benson and Hinsdale South in the Mustangs’ 51-48 victory.
The Mustangs got as close as two points at 56-54 following a Bryson Oliver layup with five seconds left in regulation, but Sobolewski converted a pair of free throws to salt away the victory for the Redwings.
The Redwings got 12 points from Graves for the second time in as many games while getting 11 points from Bonnett.
“I think, what a lot of teams don’t know coming in (against us) is that I’m a guard. I play guard in AAU,” Graves said. “I’ve played guard my whole life. Most people think just because I’m 6-6 that I’m not a guard, but when I come in here I have the ability to get to the rim and can make people come get me from the outside. I can take people to the rim and when the big guy comes to help, I’m fast enough to get to the rim where they can’t catch up to me and I get easy layups.”
