Benet beats DePaul Prep to win its first Pontiac Holiday Tournament championship

PONTIAC, Ill.—It’s impossible to fully understand and appreciate the Pontiac Holiday Tournament from outside of Pontiac.

Sixteen teams from around the state take over a small central Illinois town and for three days the entire focus of the community is on a marathon of high school hoops. The best teams and players become obsessively focused on winning the title. For a little while, the rest of the world doesn’t seem so important.

Benet senior Jayden Wright understands the unique feel of Pontiac as well as any player in history. Wright lost in the championship the last two years.

“It is a great tournament, just the atmosphere,” Wright said. “All the teams and all the great players. It is my favorite. I love it and I’m going to miss it for sure.”

Wright walked out of the gym on Wednesday fulfilled. The Eastern Illinois recruit led Benet to its first Pontiac championship with a 52-43 win against DePaul Prep.

Benet lost the last three title games, and coach Gene Heidkamp was 0-5 in Pontiac title games in his career.

“It feels amazing to win it for [Heidkamp],” Wright said “I know all the work he and all the coaches put in.”

Heidkamp believes that Wright, a speedy scoring point guard, was the key to finally overcoming Benet’s Pontiac hex.

“I guess maybe we were due,” Heidkamp said. “These guys had a little extra determination. They had been here so often. We lost a couple heartbreakers. It was nice to put it away.

“The key to the game at the end was [Wright] handling their pressure. It has been an achilles heel for us, handling pressure. We got four or five dunks at the end. They were throwing everything at us to try and turn us over. We were able to break the pressure and get easy baskets.”

Benet (17-1) held a small lead for most of the game. Back-to-back baskets by Ed Stasys with 5:42 to play put the Redwings ahead 38-30.

DePaul Prep (14-2) turned on the full court pressure at that point, and Wright and his teammates carved it up with four consecutive dunks.

Stasys, a 6-8 junior, finished with 14 points and 10 rebounds. He has a crafty, old-school game under the basket, using unconventional angles to score.

“That’s from when I was little and my dad coaching me in the backyard,” Stasys said.

Wright had 11 points and five assists and 7-0 senior Colin Stack added 15 points and four rebounds.

“Our offense struggled,” DePaul Prep coach Tom Kleinschmidt said. “They swarmed Rashaun [Porter] in the paint. [Rykan] Woo got the two fouls early and he didn’t recover from that.”

Porter, a 6-7 senior, had 12 points and five rebounds. He dominated the title game last year when DePaul Prep beat Benet. AJ Chambers led the Rams with 15 points and Rykan Woo scored eight points.

It's the first time in decades and possibly the first time ever that the Sun-Times' preseason No. 1 (DePaul) and No. 2 (Benet) met up in the Pontiac title game. It was also the first time two defending state champions met in the title game. Benet won Class 4A last season and DePaul Prep won Class 3A.