The list of standout seniors that have led Benet teams over the last six years is long, led by the likes of Frank Kaminsky, David Sobolewski, Pat McInerney and Sean O’Mara, among others.
Colin Bonnett has been the leader of a team that some unexpectedly didn’t expect to be on the precipice of yet another 20-win season.
Given his final opportunity to play inside St. Ronald Gymnasium on Saturday, Bonnett made the most of it amidst compiling a double-double as Benet won its ninth straight game, courtesy of a 56-49 victory over Hoffman Estates.
“I mean, coming into it, it was a pretty special night. You know, after being here for three years with Coach (Gene) Heidkamp and just the guys that’s in the locker room, it meant a lot,” Bonnett said. “Especially having five seniors start the game and going into a year where people don’t expect you to have a big season.
“That’s when you kind of say, ‘It doesn’t matter what everyone else says’ and you really get into your teammates and stuff. We have a great team chemistry. Guys on that team right now are my best friends. I couldn’t be happier to end the season like this with a great group of guys like this.”
Benet (20-6) claimed a sixth straight 20-win season, dating back to the 26-win season the two future Big Ten players in Sobolewski and Kaminsky each played huge parts on as juniors in 2009-10, behind two big runs.
A 23-7 run to end the first half allowed the Redwings to turn away any momentum the Hawks may have gotten after jumping out to a quick 10-3 lead.
Bonnett, who had a game-high 22 points to go along with 10 rebounds, had all four of his triples during a 15-0 spurt as part of the 23-7 run to conclude matters in the first half as the Redwings went into halftime up nine points.
With Hoffman Estates (5-16) having crept to within four points at 26-22 following baskets from Brandon Hall and Dante Cleveland to start the second half, Benet responded by ending the third on a 17-0 run to take a 21-point bulge to the fourth.
“Obviously, you know, we’re going to have our runs, up and down. You could look at it as a good thing and as a bad thing. You know, 17-0, 15-0, that’s good. But we also can’t let it happen where we have the opposite, where they put runs on us,” Bonnett said. “At the beginning of that fourth quarter, (Hoffman Estates) scored (11) straight unanswered points. It’s things like that we have to fix. We can’t let inconsistency show up in the playoffs.”
A night after hitting eight three-pointers as a team in their victory over Nazareth, the Redwings hit seven more triples on Saturday against the Hawks as Jeff Conrad hit a pair in the first half while Cameron Graves added one in the third.
Terming it not one of his team’s best shooting nights, Benet coach Gene Heidkamp was pleased with how his team responded after the slow start.
“It was a game of spurts. I thought we played well enough through the first three quarters to give ourselves a cushion,” Heidkamp said. “We needed it at the end. The fourth quarter didn’t go the way we would like, but I give (the Hawks) a lot of credit. They really kept battling. They played hard. They made some tough shots down the stretch, so the game was never comfortable. But I thought we played pretty well at times of the game and I think that was what allowed us to pull it out.”
Since the 2009-10 season, Benet has won 148 games. Victories over Marian Central and Carmel to end the regular season could possibly give it a share of the East Suburban Catholic Conference title.
But the significance of possibly getting to 150 wins since that 2010 season, which has seen the program win three regional titles and two sectional titles, isn’t lost on the man who has led that run.
“It’d be a nice accomplishment for our kids, especially with this group of guys that I don’t know if much was expected from them coming in and I think they’ve certainly represented themselves well and represented our program well,” Heidkamp said. “So to be 20-6 at this point, I think, is a nice accomplishment. But we hope it’s not the end. We hope we got some wins left in the tank here coming up.”
[shareprints gallery_id=”1741″ gallery_type=”squares” gallery_position=”pos_center” gallery_width=”width_100″ image_size=”small” image_padding=”2″ theme=”dark” image_hover=”false” lightbox_type=”slide” captions=”true” comments=”false” sharing=”true”]
