Pedelty Box: After last year, Streator tweaked schedule for better postseason path

Coming up on a year later, the players back from last winter’s Streator High boys basketball team remember well the feeling when the IHSA released its postseason schedules. It had the Bulldogs – 17-12 by the close of the regular season and co-champions of the Illinois Central Eight Conference – opening with a 53-mile drive to face the No. 1 team in Class 3A, Metamora.

“We got a little disrespected,” Streator star point guard Christian Benning said. “But we didn’t play as good a schedule as we have this year, and that’s probably what [the other coaches at the seeding meeting saw]. We didn’t think it was fair at the time, but it is what it is, and we gave the best team our best.”

Fellow then-junior/now-senior Logan Aukland didn’t like the way the bracket fell, either.

“It was just what we had to deal with,” Aukland said.

Ultimately, as with most controversial IHSA postseason assignments, it was part geography, part results and part bad luck – namely a 7 vs. 9 play-in game skipping eighth-seeded Streator – that sent the 2022-23 Bulldogs to Washington to play the eventual state champion Redbirds. Streator hung around for a bit thanks to a 25-point effort from Benning, but eventually lost 77-46.

“When we get opportunities like that to show what we can do, our seeding [resume] gets a lot better. That’s what we’re focused on.”

—  Logan Aukland, Streator boys basketball senior

Another part of it, however, came down to Streator’s limited success outside of an ICE Conference that is respected for its knack for fielding strong teams in sports such as football, baseball and softball. Basketball, not so much.

Included in the Bulldogs’ 6-9 nonconference record last season was a 1-3 mark at the season-opening Dean Riley “Shootin’ the Rock” tournament hosted by Ottawa, a seventh-place showing among the 16 teams at the Plano Christmas Classic and a handful of lopsided, nontournament losses to future sectional rivals La Salle-Peru, Ottawa and Washington.

All that contributed to a 17-12 conference co-champion drawing a first-round matchup with Class 3A’s top team a year ago.

With all that in mind, Streator coach Beau Doty and athletic director Nick McGurk set about tweaking the Bulldogs’ nonconference schedule this season to build up the team’s resume for postseason seeding. That included adding Pontiac and a game at the St. Joe-Ogden Shootout with Class 4A Normal West – both victories - along with a game at East Peoria, a close defeat.

In this case, two out of three ain’t bad.

“You can add those games,” Doty said. “But you’ve got to win ’em is the thing.

“We are in a conference that, unfortunately, a lot of the 3A teams [Streator is in sectional complexes with] aren’t aware of a lot of [the ICE’s] bigger 2A teams. Regardless of how we do sometimes, we don’t get the respect we feel we deserve. So we talk about those games being key games for us this year ... and getting a few quality wins that can really enhance our resume.

“We feel like we’ve done that this year.”

That concept likely sounds familiar to area basketball fans who remember the four-year stretch in the mid-2010s when Ottawa was abruptly shoved into Class 4A. Streator’s Route 23 rival responded by adding larger schools to its nonconference schedule to help its cause in postseason seeding meetings, not to mention get its own team better prepared for the step up in competition.

And is it did for Ottawa then, that strategy should help Streator come seeding time in early February. So should the fact the Bulldogs are winning those added games and added one additional victory to last year’s totals at both the “Shootin’ the Rock” and the high-profile Christmas Classic, where Streator placed a bold-type-on-the-resume-worthy third.

“When we get opportunities like that to show what we can do, our seeding [resume] gets a lot better,” Aukland said. “That’s what we’re focused on.”

If it continues, Streator’s stronger record both inside the ICE (currently 6-0) and outside of it (9-4) should prevent any nasty first-round regional surprises like a year ago.

When the postseason does get here, the Bulldogs will host a Class 3A regional. Their subsectional includes fellow regional host Sterling (which Streator cannot play in the opening round regardless of seeding, being a regional host itself) along with Pontiac, Ottawa, Morris, La Salle-Peru, Dixon and the likely No. 1 seed if the season continues as it began, state-ranked Kankakee.

“It’s just a must-win,” Benning said of playing teams in the Bulldogs’ subsectional. “[Those are] big games for us.”

Streator this season has defeated Pontiac and Morris, beat Ottawa and lost to La Salle-Peru in tournaments with return regular-season games with both still remaining, and isn’t scheduled to play Kankakee nor former conference foes Sterling or Dixon. All eight teams in the subsectional currently hold records of .500 or better.

There’s no easy road to a regional championship, but the Bulldogs – game by game – are working to forge as navigable a path as possible.

• J.T. Pedelty is a Regional Sports Editor for Shaw Media and can be reached at jtpedelty@shawmedia.com.