Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

SOLON – New year, same result for Solon.

After opening the season with seven consecutive December wins Solon has picked up right where it left off following the holiday break with two wins on back-to-back nights.

Class 3A fourth-ranked Solon pushed its winning streak to nine with a 77-37 win over Benton Community on Friday in a WAMAC Conference cross-divisional contest in Solon.

“We’ve just kept doing what we were doing,” Solon senior guard Rylen Stiegelmeyer said. “We didn’t really need to change much we just had to keep working hard, keep doing what we are used to and it’s working so far.”

Solon opened 2024 with a 72-59 win at Maquoketa on Thursday.

The Spartans kept on rolling Friday overcoming a slow start to improve to 9-0 with its largest margin of victory of the season.

Jake Benzing scored 12 of his game-high 19 points in the second quarter and led three Solon players in double figures as the Spartans improved to 9-0 on the season.

“We’ve kind of had a problem with coming out slow and that’s something that we need to improve on,” Benzing said. “We just picked up the energy on defense and got some key stops and some steals and that got the energy going and we started playing better on the offensive end.”

Benton Community (4-5) led 13-11 after the opening quarter as Solon went just 4-of-11 from the field over the opening eight minutes.

The Spartans quickly erased that deficit with a 10-2 surge to start the second quarter and closed the half with a 15-4 run over the final 4:55 to take a 39-23 halftime lead.

Solon was 11-of-16 from the floor in the second quarter including 4-of-8 from 3-point range.

“The past few games we’ve gotten a lot of those shots and they’ve fallen for us and they weren’t falling tonight and then we weren’t guarding with the energy that we have and that was focus,” Solon coach Jared Galpin said. “When we started guarding better that turns into better execution on offense.”

Solon was just getting started.

The Spartans opened the second half with an 8-2 run and outscored Benton Community 38-14 in the second half.

After the slow start Solon shot 61 percent over the final three quarters and finished shooting 56 percent for the game.

“They are solid team, they are a much-improved team from where they were last year and their run and jump is challenging but I thought our guys handled that pretty well,” Galpin said. “We didn’t execute very well in the first quarter and we changed what we were doing on offense and went to more of our screening action and that got guys open and we hit shot.”

Stiegelmeyer hit 3-of-4 3-pointers in the second half and had 11 of his 16 points after halftime.

Vince Steinbrech added 10 points for Solon and Gehrig Turner had nine for the Spartans.

“We just shared the ball more and we finished a lot better,” Stiegelmeyer said. “After the first quarter our shots started to fall a lot more.”

Solon won its seven December games by an average of nearly 15 points per game and has outscored Maquoketa and Benton Community by a combined 53 points to open 2024.

“That’s been our message is that we are a good team, we are strong and we are going to hit shots but the whole message now is lets be consistent,” Galpin said. “We need to be consistent in our execution, our screening, in everything we do we need to bring a level of consistency and it’s getting there.”

Benton         13  10  10   4  –  37

Solon             11  28  19  19 –  77

Benton (37) – Owen Tjelmeland 1-4 2-2 4, Brayden Sonka 2-2 0-0 5, Wyatt Rinderknecht 2-14 1-2 7, Kolby Wenger 2-8 2-2 7, Carson Nolan 1-3 0-0 2, Peter Rashidi 0-1 0-0 0, Quincy Gilbert 5-10 1-2 12, Totals 13-42 6-8 37.

Solon (77) – Karsyn Regenniter 1-1 0-0 3, Austin Knight 1-3 0-0 2, Rylen Stiegelmeyer 6-9 0-0 16, Nolan Seagren 0-1 0-0 0, Vince Steinbrech 5-6 0-0 10, Jake Benzing 8-13 0-0 19, Caleb Bock 1-2 1-2 3, Jace Janssen 1-3 0-0 2, Isaiah Zoske 1-3 0-0 3, Gehrig Turner 2-8 5-8 9, Gavin Chhabra-Miller 1-1 0-0 2, Jackson Link 3-4 0-0 8, Totals 30-54 6-10 77.

3-point field goals – BC 5-17 (Owen Tjelmeland 0-1, Brayden Sonka 1-1, Rinderknecht 2-9, Kolby Wenger 1-3, Rashidi 0-1, Gilbert 1-2), SOL 11-26 (Regenniter 1-1, Stiegelmeyer 4-7, Steinbrech 0-1, Benzing 3-6, Janssen 0-2, Zoske 1-3, Turner 0-3, Link 2-3). Rebounds – BC 29 (Gilbert 7), SOL 30 (Steinbrech 6). Turnovers – BC 16, SOL 7. Total fouls – BC 7, SOL 8, Fouled out – None. Technical fouls – None.

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