Solon pulls away late to knock off Marion in big top-10 game

MARION — What Solon did Tuesday night is exactly what good, experienced boys’ basketball teams do. And Solon is a good, experienced boys’ basketball team.

The Spartans led the entire way against Marion in their Wamac Conference game, though things got kind of dicey in the fourth quarter.

Marion hit a couple of shots and seemed to be flummoxing Solon with a unique triangle-and-two defense that saw man-to-man coverage on leading scorers Jake Benzing and Rylan Stiegelmeier and a zone against the other three. A nine and sometimes 10-point lead suddenly got sliced to 48-46 with 6:22 left in the fourth quarter.

But instead of folding, Gehrig Turner came off the bench and swished an ensuing 3-point shot from the top of the arc. Then he hit another one on Solon’s next offensive possession from nearly the same place.

Benzing hit a trey shortly after that, and, voila, Solon’s lead was back to a much more comfortable 11, a mere two minutes after it had been two. The Class 3A No. 4 Spartans eventually beat No. 8 Marion, 70-54.

Add some numbers there, and Solon outscored Marion by a 22-8 margin those final six-plus minutes. What good teams do.

“They went triangle-and-two, guarded Rylen and guarded Jake, and that’s something we just don’t see much,” said Solon Coach Jared Galpin. “So we wanted to get Rylen on the wing or Jake on the wing and run motion ... Gehrig did the same thing in our first game against them this season. Hit a late 3 in the first game. Hit two 3s here to kind of put the game away.”

With eight seniors on the roster, dudes who were part of an 18-6 team from last season that lost in a substate final, you didn’t have squint to see the potential of this current Solon team. A 13-0 record has been accomplished behind balanced scoring: guard-forwards Benzing and Vince Steinbrech and guards Stiegelmeyer and Turner all average double-figure points.

And an attention to detail defensively.

“Definitely our defense,” Steinbrech said. “It was what we emphasized early in the year. Compared to last year, we were kind of lacking, so we wanted to do a better job on the defensive side.”

“As a class, this senior class, we’ve got a lot of seniors, and we’ve have been waiting for this year for a long time,” Benzing said. “We’ve played ball together for a long time. I think we’ve always known our senior year was going to be a good one.”

Benzing had 19 points in this game, with Stiegelmeyer adding 15 and Steinbrech 14. Senior center Kylar Whitman had 17 points and 10 rebounds for Marion (9-4), which had a six-game win streak snapped.

The Wolves’ last two losses have been to Solon, the first one by a 62-56 margin in mid-December at Solon.

“We expect to go in and compete in every game,” Galpin said. “Our goal is to go 1-0 on every night. Now our focus is Friday night and our goal is play CPU and win that game. We know what we have. It’s a matter of being consistent and playing to the level we are capable of playing. That’s been the message.”

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Photos: Solon at Marion boys’ basketball

Solon 70, Marion 54

AT MARION

SOLON (70): Austin Knight 3-5 0-0 6, Vince Steinbrech 5-9 4-6 14, Jake Benzing 7-15 0-0 19, Rylen Stiegelmeier 6-10 0-1 15, Gehrig Turner 3-4 1-2 9, Brett White 0-0 0-0 0, Caleb Bock 3-9 1-2 7, Isaiah Zoske 0-1 0-0 0, Jackson Link 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 28-53 6-9 70.

MARION (54): Grayson Kirsch 2-6 1-4 5, Kylar Whitman 8-11 1-2 17, Josh Noll 2-6 0-0 5, Jordan Fischer 4-9 0-0 8, Austin Goodrich 5-9 2-2 15, Tait Rahe 0-0 0-0 0, Tyler Farber 0-2 0-0 0, Kaleb Diers 2-3 0-0 4, Jaryn Griffith 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 23-46 3-8 54.

Halftime - Solon 33, Marion 26. 3-point goals - Solon 8-18 (Knight 0-1, Steinbrech 0-1, Benzing 3-4, Stiegelmeyer 3-5, Turner 2-3, Bock 0-3, Zoske 0-1), Marion 3-17 (Kirsch 0-2, Noll 1-5, Fischer 0-3, Goodrich 3-5, Farber 0-2). Rebounds - Solon 26 (White 7), Marion 24 (Whitman 10). Total fouls - Solon 13, Marion 10. Fouled out - Noll. Turnovers - Solon 5, Marion 11.

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