Slam dunk of an idea comes to fruition
Every September, Jim O'Boye sends an email to a handful of area girls high school basketball coaches asking who they'd like to face in the annual Coach Kipp Hoopsfest.
This time, he received a rather unique request from Lake Zurich's Chris Bennett.
“I said, 'I would love to play Montini,'” said Bennett, who had Broncos coach Shannon Spanos as a player when she was on the Illinois Hustle in 1998. “All of a sudden a light bulb clicked on in my head that, 'Oh my God. They renamed this event after Derril Kipp, and I coached with Derril, and Derril made me part of his program and Shannon was one of the kids on our team.
“Like, holy cow, the connection is right there. It works out really nice.”
Bennett, who has been the coach at Lake Zurich for 19 years, believes this is the first time he will face a former player in a high school game. The teams square off at 2 p.m. Saturday. It is one of seven games scheduled at Montini.
The shootout, which O'Boye began with Kipp's help 34 years ago, continues with 11 games at Benet High School on Monday.
Spanos played for Bennett when she was a junior at Montini. The Hustle was created in the 1990s by Kipp, who coached at Maine West and is in the Illinois High School Hall of Fame.
In those days, Bennett said, there were only four high-end AAU teams in Illinois. That Hustle squad produced 10 girls who went on to play at Division I schools and four more — including Spanos, who played at Trinity College in Connecticut — who also played collegiately.
That 1998 Hustle squad advanced to nationals, losing in the Elite Eight at Indianapolis.
“It was such a great opportunity to be on that team with girls that were so skilled and so talented,” said Spanos, who keeps in touch with a number of teammates, including Sarah Kustok (an NBA analyst for YES Network and Fox Sports), Jessica Wilhite (who played at Glenbard West), Kristi Faulkner (Glenbard West coach) and Heather Cassidy (Illinois Central College assistant coach).
Kipp, who passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 71 in 2016, will be honored during a pregame ceremony. His widow, Marianne, plans to attend. During warmups, both teams' players will wear Illinois Hustle jerseys.
“Just hanging with Derril in hotel rooms across the country, I learned more basketball than I probably learned from anybody,” Bennett said. “He was just a master of all things girls basketball, he was a master of coaching personalities. It wasn't just Xs and Os.
“It was learning about how to teach them life lessons while we're coaching as well.”
Said Spanos: “Coach Kipp inspired me to become a coach. He has impacted so many young people and that has always been an inspiration to me.”
If Montini (14-4) plays anything like Spanos did 20-25 years ago, Bennett expects a hard-fought battle.
“She was a coach on the floor,” Bennett said. “She was the hustle kid, the glue kid, the one that you could put in a game to play a role for whatever you needed to get done. You needed a defensive stop, you needed a rebound, you needed somebody to handle the ball against the press — she was that kid.
“So I expect her team to be exactly like that. Tough. Role-oriented. Know the game of basketball. I have no doubt that's exactly what she's taught them to do.”
Montini is led by Viki Matulevicius (15.7 points per game, 6.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists), Nikki Kerstein (14.4 ppg, 4.2 apg, 3.1 steals) and Alyssa Epps (9.0 ppg). Lake Zurich (14-8) is led by Avery Cooper, Anna Gilbertson (both 9 ppg) and Alex Nowak-Tice (7 rpg).
Other Kipp Hoopsfest notes:
While Jim O'Boye founded the event in 1991, he credits Derril Kipp for making it come to fruition. O'Boye's goal is to match up the area's best teams — and several from out of state.
“Nobody wants to see a 45-point blowout,” O'Boye said. “But you get the top two teams in the area playing, that's a different story. And, according to Kipp and other people out East, this was the first ever girls in-season basketball shootout. That's why I call it America's Original Shootout.”
Monday features six big-time matchups at Benet:
∎ Lake Central (Indiana) faces Loyola Academy, ranked No. 3 by Maxpreps.com, at 10:30 a.m.
∎ Pewaukee, the No. 1 team in Wisconsin, will play No. 7 Nazareth Academy at 12:15 p.m.
∎ Indian Creek (Indiana), which boasts a 6-foot-4 Indiana University recruit, takes on No. 9 Fremd at 2 p.m.
∎ Lincoln, Ill. – which boasts one of the best players in the state in Khloe Froebe – vs. Kenwood at 3:45 p.m.
∎ Montini squares off against No. 25 Whitney Young at 5:30 p.m.
∎ No. 1 Bolingbrook takes on No. 2 Maine South at 7 p.m.