Sum of its parts more than enough for Benet in win over Bloom at Pontiac

PONTIAC — At its best the Benet Academy basketball team plays as a locked in unit, placing little emphasis on any one given player.

The Redwings broke out of that mold for a little bit in Friday’s quarterfinal matchup with Bloom but with good reason.

Daniel Pauliukonis was having a field day.

Pauliukonis scored 18 first-half points as Benet opened up a substantial early lead.

Bloom changed its tactics at half and put more defensive focus on slowing Pauliukonis.

That didn’t work either. As Benet simply went back to distributing the ball through every other player on the court and worked its offensive effectively and fluently as it collected a 58-44 victory.

The win lifts Benet (11-1) into Saturday’s semifinal round where it will face top-seeded Simeon at 2:30 p.m. Benet has finished second at the Pontiac Tournament in each of the last two seasons.

Benet broke away early from Bloom capping the first quarter with a 8-0 run off of a 3-pointers from Jayden Wright and Pauliukonis and another 2-point tally from Pauliukonis.

Pauliukonis, a 6-foot-9 senior and SIU recruit, would keep that hot hand into the second quarter scoring Benet’s first five points of the frame and then tack on two more 3-pointers later on before the break to play a major part in Benet building a 34-20 halftime lead.

“I just got off to a hot start,” Pauliukonis said. “I felt good going through my pregame and it carried over to the game.”

Bloom changed its defensive tactics in the second half and was more conscious of where Pauliukonis was but other Benet players simply stepped up and took on the offensive load.

“They face-guarded him (Pauliukokis) with Elijah Lovemore so we used him as a screener to open up the other guys,” Benet coach Gene Heidkamp said. “They made a concerted effort to take him out of the game. They wanted to play 4-on-4 with the other guys and we had enough offense to sustain the lead.”

Bloom did manage to whittle the lead down to eight points early in the fourth quarter, but the Redwings would rip off an 7-0 run capped by a Colin Stack (nine points, eight rebounds) dunk to push the lead back to 15 and that was more than enough to lock in the berth in the semifinals.

Pauliokonis only scored one more basket in the second half, finishing with a game-high 20 points. Blake Fagbemi added 14 and Wright finished with 10.

And while the lion’s share of the points were scored early by Pauliokonis the seemingly seamless transition Benet made in finding other ways to score shows how dangerous the Redwings are as a sum of their parts.

“Everyone on the court can do so damage to the other team and we know that,” Fagbemi said. “So we know that if one player is getting taken away, we have four other people that can beat you.”

Heidkamp was generally happy with his team’s overall effort and was certainly appreciative it wasn’t a repeat performance of last year’s marathon battle with Bloom at Pontiac where Benet won a double overtime decision in the semifinals.

“They are tough,” Heidkamp said. “They are a tough matchup for us. We kind of got out of rhythm and got all sped up. They were pushing us and we were lucky to push it back out in the fourth quarter.”