Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Jared Galpin could have never imagined the 100^th win of his coaching career would come as a visitor in the gym where he made his head coaching debut.

However the Solon head coach had no problem imaging the exact type of hard-fought, down the wire battle his Spartans got from his former team on Saturday.

Solon outscored Regina 12-5 over the final six minutes and gave Galpin career win number 100 with a 58-49 win over Regina (7-11) in a non-conference contest in Iowa City.

“We knew they were going to give us their best shot and they are close, they have a good squad they have two bigs that can cause a lot of problems,” Galpin said. “It was what we expected but it was good to get a win and end a two-game losing streak.”

The first 53 wins of Galpin’s coaching career came at Regina where he led the Regals to three conference titles and a state tournament berth in three seasons.

On Saturday Galpin grabbed career win number 100 on the visitors bench behind 41 combined points from juniors Vince Steinbrech and Jake Benzing.

Benzing and Steinbrech scored the final eight points for Solon as the Spartans outscored Regina 8-3 over the final 3:59 to improve to 10-5 on the season with its fourth consecutive win over the Regals.

“That’s how Regina is, we knew they were going to play hard and give us their best shot,” Benzing said. “Being so close it’s a rivalry and we knew they’d play us hard but we played good and came through with a win.”

Steinbrech scored six of his game-high 22 in the final four minutes as Solon finally pulled away.

The Spartans led 33-29 at the half and 43-42 after three quarters but couldn’t relax until a Steinbrech bucket in the paint made it 56-49 with 39 seconds to play.

“We knew they were going to play hard,” Steinbrech said. “We had to make some adjustments and we pulled it out in the end.”

Regina used a 9-3 run in the second quarter to take a 29-27 lead with 1:06 left but Solon scored the final six points of the half, all by Benzing and Steinbrech to take a 33-29 lead.

Solon never trailed again but couldn’t shake the Regals until the final minutes.

Regina got the lead down to one three times in the third quarter and trailed just 50-46 with under four minutes to play.

The final four minutes belonged to the Spartans.

“It was a lot of running our offense,” Steinbrech said. “That’s what we really emphasized the most at half and we did that better in the fourth quarter.”

Solon shot 41 percent from the field on Saturday but was 6-of-12 from the field in the fourth quarter, and hit four of its final five field goal attempts.

All four of those field goals came from Benzing and Steinbrech.

“We made note to amp up the defense and be more patient on offense,” Benzing said. “We worked the ball side to side and got better looks at the rim.”

Benzing had 19 points on 8-of-15 shooting while Steinbrech had 22 points, doing most of his damage on drives to the basket.

“He has gotten a lot better,” Benzing said of Steinbrech. “He is attacking the rim relentlessly and that is huge for us to have another guy that can go out there and get 20.”

Michael Martin had 18 points for Regina while Drew Streb had 10 points and 10 rebounds and John Devery had eight points and 11 boards.

Solon                         13  20  10  15  –  58

Regina                        13  16  13    7  –  49

Solon (58) – Sean Stahle 1-5 3-3 5, Rylen Stiegelmeyer 3-6 2-2 9, Cole Buffington 0-2 0-0 0, Vince Steinbrech 9-19 4-6 22, Jake Benzing 8-15 2-2 19, Oaken Foster 0-3 0-0 0, Gehrig Turner 1-4 1-2 3, Totals 22-54 12-15 58.

Regina (49) – Eddie Petersen 2-9 0-0 5, Michael Martin 6-13 2-6 18, Coleton Daniel 1-6 0-0 2, Connor Nicpon 1-3 2-2 4, Aidan O’Neil 1-1 0-0 2, John Devery 4-6 0-0 8, Drew Streb 4-8 2-2 10, Totals 19-46 6-10 49.

3-point field goals – ICR 5-18 (Petersen 1-5, Martin 4-8, Daniel 0-3, Nicpon 0-2), SOL 2-13 (Stahle 0-1, Stiegelmeyer 1-2, Buffington 0-1,Steinbrech 0-4, Benzing 1-3, Foster 0-1, Turner 0-1). Rebounds – ICR 35 (Devery 11), SOL 30 (Steinbrech 11). Turnovers – ICR 14, SOL 5. Total fouls – ICR 13, SOL 11. Fouled out – None. Technical fouls – None.

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