A basketball coach assembles his players for the first practice of the week. They`ve just come off their biggest victory of the season and they`re flying high. The coach reminds them that their next task is to prepare to play Benet Academy at Benet.
Good luck, fellows. You`ll need good defense, good offense, good rebounding and more.
Bill Geist, in his 17th year as Benet coach, has guided the Redwings to 97 consecutive victories in their cozy, noisy gymnasium. The latest, a 60-39 rout of Marmion Friday night, clinched Benet`s 11th straight West Suburban Catholic Conference title.
How does Benet do it? It`s the largest school in the conference, but St. Edward coach Joe Tullo, who has spent seven years trying to win a conference title, said: ”It`s definitely more than that. My hat`s off to the Benet kids. The No. 1 thing is they`re tough kids, mentally tough type kids. Obviously, Bill does a great job.
”Stability is a major factor. I find that with our program now. The longer you stay at a place and establish a program, the kids know what`s expected.”
”It (the enrollment) has helped,” said Geist, whose Redwings (18-3, 10-0) defeated Wheaton Central 58-42 Saturday in a nonconference game at Wheaton. ”For a long time, we were the only AA school in the conference. Now there`s more AA than A. Obviously, you have to have some pretty good players. It`s just that we ran into a string there where we had some good players.”
The dominance started with the 1976-77 season when Mike Lang and Kevin Conrad were sophomores. Two years later, they led Benet to a 30-3 record and third place in the Class AA state tournament. Benet was 84-8 when Lang and Conrad were starters.
”A lot of credit has to go to the school,” Geist said. ”The kids in our area could have gone to a number of schools in Downers Grove or Naperville. I think they chose Benet for the academics and the basketball program.
”We don`t give financial aid at all. The thing I dislike the most about my tenure here is a lot of people believe we give financial aid. We`ve never done that. There`s no way you`re going to convince people of that. Their thinking is if a parochial school is doing well, it must be giving financial aid.”
Immaculate Conception was doing well in recent years, but not against Benet. Former IC coach Tom Anstett, in his second year at Glenbrook North, coached IC when the Knights were Benet`s toughest conference challenger.
”I always enjoyed competing against Benet tremendously,” Anstett said.
”We had tremendous games. We could never quite get over the hump against them. We lost a bunch by two points. I always enjoyed the competition. They`re one of the best programs in the state, in my opinion.
”The fans really get behind them. It`s a real cozy place to play. The fans are a real big factor. You can beat them, it`s just a matter of the right night. Your kids have to be tough and you have to shoot the ball well.”
The rivalries with Benet are intense. Opponents have come to think, ”We hate Benet.”
”IC fans always said that,” Anstett said. ”That just goes with the rivalry. It`s a friendly, but spirited rivalry. Some of the games we played were some of the best high school basketball if you like the intensity and the defense, the intangibles that went into those games.”
Geist, whose teams have won nine regionals, five sectionals and been Downstate three times, knows his program isn`t loved by everyone.
”It`s hard to like somebody when they`re winning all the time,” Geist said. ”I was talking to (IC athletic director) Jack Lewis a few years ago, and he said `Do you realize that most coaches in the conference hadn`t been around when a conference school had beaten Benet in basketball.` ”
Benet had a 96-game conference winning streak two years ago until St. Edward ended that. IC defeated Benet last season, so the Redwings aren`t quite perfect.
Tullo offers this minor solution to Benet`s dominance in the conference.
”A joke I`ve used is maybe the conference should start giving out a second-place trophy,” Tullo said. ”If we didn`t have Benet in the conference, we would have won a few conference titles.”
The last chance for Benet to stumble at home this year is Saturday against St. Patrick. It will be a special game for Geist, a 1962 graduate of the North Side school and a former player for current St. Patrick coach Max Kurland.
Geist is also looking to the future. He still enjoys coaching, especially now that his son, Mike, is a junior on the varsity.
”The goal we have now is to just maintain the excellent tradition of basketball we have here. That`s hard to do,” said Geist. ”If we win 20 games, most people don`t think that`s much. I think that`s very sad. I think that`s the price you pay for success.”
