With too many lopsided scores and little drama, the recently concluded holiday tournaments didn’t provide quite the normal juice to the regular season they typically do.
As we recalibrate in the wake of those tournaments, there are some must-see matchups that should energize the season.
Go ahead and start the hype for the Warren-Benet clash in less than three weeks, which will be a rematch of the Class 4A championship game from last season.
Benet, the top-ranked team in the Super 25, and Warren, which is led by the best player in the state in Jaxson Davis, will square off in the annual When Sides Collide on Jan. 24 at Benet.
The teams put together the most impressive runs in the holiday tournaments.
Yes, Warren won the Big Dipper tournament, but it’s how the Blue Devils won it — in complete and dominating fashion — that stood out.
Victories in the semifinals and championship game by a combined 55 points against ranked teams left observers wondering just how good Warren can be in the second half.
Davis lit up the Big Dipper with a 51-point performance in the Blue Devils’ rout of Kenwood in the title game, but each member of the supporting cast continued to play his role. And senior Braylon Walker is turning into the impressive running mate he was expected to be.
For Benet, it was a December to remember. The Redwings really came together and showed their ceiling behind senior guard Jayden Wright and senior big man Colin Stack, who produce in different ways, along with the emergence of 6-8 junior Ed Stasys.
Benet swept three games on a trip to Philadelphia in the middle of the month and followed that by winning two holiday tournaments to end it.
The real eye-opener, however, was the Redwings’ performance at Pontiac. Benet, which had lost in the title game in each of the last three seasons, took down then-No. 1 DePaul Prep. That came after it dismantled then-No. 2 Curie by 33 points in the semifinals.
That leads us to another circle-the-calendar date: Feb. 17. That’s when Benet and Marist collide in what will be the last East Suburban Catholic Conference game. The conference will disband after the season, with ESCC teams headed to the Chicago Catholic League in 2026-27.
The ESCC couldn’t have asked for a better final matchup, which will feature two teams with state-title aspirations.
Marist, which captured its first Centralia Holiday Tournament championship since 2016, enters the new year rolling.
Before their title-game showdown against unbeaten Centralia, the RedHawks had dominated, beating their first three tournament foes — including Evanston — by an average of more than 30 points.
Behind tournament MVP Charles Barnes, Marist handed Centralia its first loss. Barnes scored 31 points in the semifinal victory against Evanston and 14 in the title-game triumph.
The RedHawks are improved defensively and have a lot of balance. Barnes, Stephen Brown, Kendall Meyers, Adoni Vassilakis, TJ Tate, Karson Thomas and Tyce Bullock all reached double figures in scoring at least once in the tournament.
Marist, which hasn’t lost to an in-state opponent, will get its biggest regular-season test to date in a marquee matchup against DePaul Prep at the When Sides Collide event.