I suppose it’s okay to write about the season at this point. When the season opened the DePaul Prep Rams had won three consecutive state champions, a remarkable accomplishment anyway one looks at it. But there were buts. They moved to class 4A. A fourth consecutive would be daunting.
And there was Benet. The season has shown us that Benet and DePaul Prep exceptionally good teams. Clearly, they were the class of high school basketball this season. What surprised me a little was how evenly matched the teams are.
Friday’s game proved that. The slimmest of margins separated these two teams. The story might be entirely the opposite absent one play, or one call, or one bounce of the ball.
I have been playing that game over and over in my head for a day now. The press. The turnover, such as it was. The inbounds. The free throw.
With just under three minutes to play, DePaul put on a full court press on Benet bringing the ball in.
“We went to it late. It worked for us,” Rams’ head coach Tom Kleinschmidt said.
“We didn’t do it well the first time we played them. But we worked on it and it worked out well for us. We didn’t want to do it too early so they would get comfortable with it. I worked out for us.”
Benet head coach Gene Heidkamp reflected on the press as well.
“We struggled. The irony is, and I give them a lot of credit. We played them in Pontiac. They pressed us at the end of the game. We ended up taking the game out. It was like a two-point game. We ended up pushing it out to almost double digits. Today, they came at us with their pressure and we coughed the ball up and they got back in the game,” Heidkamp said.
“We worked on it in practice. We saw in the film what areas we needed to work on,” Rams’s senior center Rashaun Porter explained.
“We wanted to really execute. We all knew that we wanted to try to win. We wanted to get the dub. We were willing to do whatever we could to get that win.”
Kleinschmidt knew he might need that press against Benet again. He and his Rams prepared and practiced it. It worked. The Rams erased the deficit and had that ball and a chance to win. More evidence of just how even these teams are.
One of the things about this DePaul Prep versus Benet business is how close the coaches and players are. Blog contributor John McMontgomery did a great piece about brothers Tom Kleinschmidt and David Kleinschmidt. David, a former sophomore coach for DePaul Prep is now the sophomore coach and varsity assistant at Benet.
Tom Kleinschmidt and Benet coach Gene Heidkamp are friends. It’s a little more too.
“When I was at St. Ben’s high school, my first coaching job. I recruited Gene [Heidkamp] when he was in eighth grade and St. Gertrude’s,” explains DePaul Prep long time assistant coach Kenny Gryzwa.
“So I have known him a long time. I was heartbroken when he didn’t come to St. Ben’s. The team that I recruited him to be on ended up being ranked third or fourth in the City in class 2A at the time. He would have been on the team. He is a wonderful, great, great coach.”
Shortly after defeating the Rams in Champaign, Heidkamp had mixed emotions.
“I don’t like it at all. I don’t enjoy it. There was nothing enjoyable about those thirty-two minutes. Everything was a grind for both teams. We know each other so well. We know each other’s personnel. Our kids are friends off the court. I love Tommy. He’s the best. And then Coach Gryzwa and all the guys they have over there. I like the kids. I have so much respect for the kids. It’s a shame that somebody had to lose this game. I would have felt the same way if it was us. I am not surprised it came right down to the wire.”
The same was true for Kleinschmidt and Gryzwa.
“It’s awkward. I feel the same way. It’s awkward. You want to play the best. We are two of the better teams in the state, nationally actually. It’s awkward playing against him,” Kleinschmidt said.
“It’s bittersweet. It’s different. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve got to say it’s almost worse because you know these are good friends and you know what kind of competitors they are, Gryzwa said.
“They are like you. And you want to beat them bad. And not because you don’t like them but because you do like them. It’s kind of hard to explain but you know they appreciate what you accomplish when you beat them. We know that they work as hard at what they do as we do. And we respect that. And so that win means so much more.”
This DePaul Prep program is on the verge of becoming a thing, a historic thing. The one part to overcome is the not being in the top class for the three state championships. With DePaul Prep in 4A now, with a little more success, DePaul Prep and their coach will certainly be in consideration for a one of the historic greats in state history.
“What Tom has built in twelve years is nothing short of amazing,” said DePaul Prep athletic director Pat Mahoney.
“The standard, the culture, those are the buzz words you hear, but it’s real. It’s real. And the kids are a joy to be around. It’s not just win at all costs. It’s not just we are machines and we are going to win. There is pure joy in these guys. Just being around these guys makes you happy.”
“When he came in the first couple years we were struggling,” recounted John “Maz” Maciaszkiewicz, the decades long score keeper for Gordon Tech and DePaul Prep teams.
“I can remember the first year he came in and he looked at the schedule. We had lost 29 games in a row in the Catholic League. It’s important to win the Catholic League. Back in the 70s, if you wanted to win the Catholic League, you had to go through Gordon. You had to beat Gordon. It’s one of those things. Kids started coming in. Things changed. Kids believe in his system. They just play. It’s once in a lifetime, when you get the right coach at the right time.”
“In this era, you might not see [this] again,” Gryzwa said speaking of Kleinschmidt’s six state final appearances in twelve years of coaching.
“As we move forward, the way the parity seems to be happening now, especially with the public league being down and it’s so competitive all around it’s going to hard for teams to keep repeating that. The talent is going to be more spread out. I don’t think it is going to happen,” Grzywa continued.
“We were pulling up here and I looked at him, seeing the big circular dome, I say, ‘Tommy, can you believe how many times you have been here? Did you ever think you would be here?’”
Believe it. Believe it will happen again. Next season will be here soon enough.
