MEN'S BASKETBALL: Benn has become a true Philadelphia Eagle

By Jonah Bronstein

MARLTON, N.J. — Niagara University basketball player Bilal Benn doesn’t hang out in his hometown much over the summer. He works out, and when the workout is over, he tries to figure out when and where his next workout will be. Sometimes, if there’s time, he squeezes a workout between workouts.

You ask Bilal to show you around Philadelphia for a day and he directs you to the South Jersey suburbs. That’s where he found a place to work out on this day in late July. It’s not all that hot, but the morning’s rain has made the air heavy. Even though Bilal has an industrial-sized fan on full blast in the corner of an auxiliary basketball gym at Cherokee High School, you sweat standing still.

Bilal works up a lather during the first drill, a combination of flexibility training and shooting practice. He does a set of lateral lunges along the baseline then sprints out beyond the 3-point arc, catches an often off-target pass, pivots toward the basket while swinging the ball below his knees and rises up for jumper. Usually, the ball swishes through the net. Make or miss, he stalks down the rebound. He repeats the drill dozens of times from six different spots on the court. When you ask to get a drink, he takes free throws.

For the next drill, Bilal works on different dribble moves while you play token defense. Every time he goes by, sweat splashes on you. Eventually, this becomes a problem, not for you, but for him. Bilal begins slipping on puddles of his own sweat on the floor. He switches his shirt and goes to the other basket. Soon, he slips again. His shorts are soaked and dripping from the hem. Afraid he’s going to get hurt, Bilal cuts the workout short, after about 90 minutes.

He’s not satisfied.

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The unique thing about this workout is that it happened around lunch time and was Bilal’s first of the day. On most mornings, Bilal heads to one of the colleges in Philadelphia for the renowned workouts run by John Hardnett. For over two decades, the “Hardnett Clinics” have collected nearly all the city’s basketball talent for hours of competitive drills and full-court runs. The best players there are NBA veterans, the worst are college and prep stars.

“Bilal’s one of the hardest-working kids I’ve ever had,” Hardnett said. “He’s one of the most respected players in the gym. He’s not the most talented person, but he has the desire to improve and always work on the next thing. In between workouts, he’d lift weights. And that’s six, seven days a week.”

Knowing he needs to be at LaSalle, Drexel or St. Joe’s by 9 a.m. each morning, Bilal usually stays in a small room at his cousin Tanya’s North Philly row house. On this rare occasion when Hardnett is not holding a workout, Bilal borrows Tanya’s car and makes the 40-minute drive to Marlton.

After the workout, Bilal heads to the home of Dave Distel, a Cherokee assistant, to wash his clothes, eat lunch with Distel’s wife, Jessica, and play Nintendo Wii with their young son Zach. For the past several summers, this has been Bilal’s home.

“I met Bilal when he was in grade school and he was playing in the Sonny Hill future’s league,” Distel said. “He went to a feeder school for Cardinal Dougherty, where I was coaching, and he ended up coming to Dougherty. He was one of those kids who would never leave the gym. When he was on J.V. and the varsity was practicing, he’d dribble on the side, watching. We developed a relationship. I found out about the life he was leading, and I felt he was reaching out for some support, someone to talk to.”

On the day Bilal was born, his father was in jail and his mother wasn’t ready to raise a child. She wound up leaving him on a neighbor’s doorstep and Bilal didn’t see her again until he was in college. An aunt brought Bilal back to his grandmother, Mary Benn, and she became his primary caretaker, with help from her six children.

“My grandmom, that’s my rock,” Bilal said. “She took care of me, fed me, put clothes on my back, shoes on my feet. I couldn’t ask for a better person to have in my life. Knowing that she put in all this time with me, all my life so I could play basketball, I know I’m going to get the most out of basketball.”

Bilal said his father took an active role in his upbringing after getting out of jail, but he died when Bilal was a freshman at Dougherty. During that time, three of Bilal’s friends were murdered, including Marty Norcome, one of his earliest basketball mentors.

“He grew up in a very rough neighborhood,” Distel said. “He’s seen things you and I wouldn’t understand.”

Bilal didn’t succumb to the streets of Philadelphia, but he wasn’t a model student at Dougherty. After getting too many demerits in his junior year, he was expelled. His final transgression was skipping first period to eat breakfast in the cafeteria. At the time, he was spending most weekends at the Distel home during basketball season.

“His grandmother was crushed,” Distel said. “I told his grandmother that I felt if Bilal was going to matriculate into the student, player and human being that he wanted to be, he was going to have to live with me. I could monitor him around the clock. She signed off on his custody and he came to live with us. It was difficult, I’m not going to lie. In my house, I have rules, and that was new to him. But he realized what we were doing was good for him.”

After Bilal graduated from Cherokee, Distel enrolled him at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia. That experience hardened Bilal’s work ethic, and made him more determined to get the most out of his basketball ability.

Bilal had first planned to play at Siena College, a school that would later become his main rival while at Niagara. He backed out of that commitment when coach Rob Lanier, a Buffalo native, left to become an assistant at Florida. Distel tried to steer Bilal to St. Joe’s, but instead he chose to join former Dougherty teammates Shane Clark and Kyle Lowry at Villanova.

Turns out, Bilal wasn’t skilled enough to be an impact player in the Big East. In two years, he averaged 7.2 minutes and 1.6 points. The folks at ’Nova respected Bilal’s toughness and work ethic a great deal. They still do. This past summer, Bilal was playing pickup there when Scottie Reynolds, the Wildcats star point guard, clenched Bilal’s sweat-soaked shirt, compared it to his younger teammates, and declared that everyone needed to start working as hard as Bilal.

Villanova coach Jay Wright didn’t want Bilal to transfer, but it was clear that he had to go to a smaller league if he wanted to be a major contributor. And to fully extract himself from the ills of the street, Bilal needed to get out of Philadelphia. He settled on Niagara, joining former AAU teammate Tyrone Lewis, because, as Drexel coach Bruiser Flint said, “Philly guys know (coach) Joe (Mihalich) will take care of you.”

Bilal spent the summer of 2008 living with Randy Foye, a former Dougherty and Villanova teammate who became a first-round NBA draft pick. They worked out with Hardnett every morning, and lifted weights in Foye’s basement.

While spending his mandatory year in residency at Niagara, Bilal worked overtime on his jump shot with assistant coach Luke Dobrich. He didn’t have 3-point range before coming to Niagara, and didn’t consider himself much of an offensive player. But Mihalich encourages all his players to think of themselves as scorers, especially if they’re wide open at the 3-point line.

Moving from guard to forward and replacing Charron Fisher, the nation’s second-leading scorer the year before and the team’s leading rebounder, Bilal was the best all-around player on the 2008-09 Niagara squad that won 26 games, the most since 1922. Standing 6-foot-4 with an unimpressive vertical leap, Bilal led the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference in rebounding. He was the only player in the country to average more than 14 points, nine rebounds, three assists and two steals, and he confidently sank 35 3-pointers in 35 games. His defensive mindset changed the culture on Monteagle Ridge, and helped Lewis reach his potential as a defensive dynamo.

After the season, Bilal underwent arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his knee. Even though it was a minor procedure, the fact that he’d have to suspend his workouts for a few weeks and couldn’t go full speed for a while after upset him.

In May, Bilal graduated from Niagara with a degree in sociology. Distel was more proud of that diploma than any double-double or all-conference honor.

“There were times growing up when you didn’t know if he was going to make it,” Distel said. “But he surrounded himself with good people, made sacrifices and changed his lifestyle. I consider myself a bridge between his youth and his adult life. All we could do is help shape him. He’s done tremendously well for himself.”

Bilal stayed on campus to work on a second major in criminal justice and utilize his all-hours access to the Gallagher Center gym. But when summer school ended, he had to leave his dorm room and go back to Philadelphia. Foye had been traded and wasn’t going to be in town that summer. The Distels didn’t have a car he could use every morning to get from Marlton to Hardnett’s workouts.

“This summer was kind of tough,” Bilal said. “There was nothing set like the summer before when I was working out with Randy Foye. I was bouncing around all over the place. It was upsetting me because I wasn’t being as consistent as I wanted to be. I wasn’t eating properly. At my cousin’s, I didn’t want to go in there and eat up all the food because she’s got a son there.”

A week into his summer vacation, Bilal was missing the ease at which he could concentrate on basketball at Niagara, and sent Mihalich a text message, asking if he could come back to school early.

Frustrated but hardly deterred, Bilal always found a gym in or around Philadelphia. There were more two-a-day workouts than days off. When he went to visit his grandmother, who now lives in Delaware, he called Niagara assistant Phil Martelli, Jr., looking for the number of a local high school coach who could let him in the gym to workout.

“No matter where it is, no matter who he is with, no matter what time of day it is, he works and works to find a gym,” Martelli said.

Martelli, a Philadelphia native whose father has coached at St. Joe’s for a quarter-century, said Bilal’s style of play and preparation personifies the city’s relationship with basketball.

“The Philly ballplayer is someone who is probably a little bit overlooked, doesn’t quite get the credit that goes to the New York City guys, or even the Baltimore or D.C. guys,” Martelli said. “In a lot of places, when you’re recruiting, the coaches want to tell you how great their kids are. The Philadelphia coaches tell you what their flaws are. There’s an attitude with those guys, they have a different mentality. They think, ‘there’s always something I can do to get better.’ Bilal has that chip on his shoulder.”

“There’s so much competitiveness in Philly, that’s probably where I get mine,” Bilal said. “We’re not going to back down from anything.”

Bilal’s senior season hasn’t played out the way most thought it would, given all his hard work after an all-conference junior year. He came back to campus in the fall improved in every area, his surgically-repaired knee felt better than it had throughout most of last season, and he was establishing himself as one of the best small college players in the country in the early going.

Then the other knee started to hurt, and it was decided he’d have another knee operation. He returned to practice two weeks after surgery, and was playing again after three weeks. His production in the hustle categories has hardly diminished but he clearly hasn’t been at full strength since returning. Over the last six weeks, he’s scoring 12.3 points on 33.7 percent shooting. Meanwhile, the Purple Eagles have lost seven of 11.

It’s been difficult for those who know Bilal to watch him struggle with his shot. That was the weakest part of his game a few years ago, but after thousands of hours of practice, he turned it into a reliable weapon.

Every day, after the Purple Eagles practice, Bilal gets in extra shooting practice with Dobrich or a student-manager. He goes to the Gallagher Center early in the morning to get shots up. He often returns late at night. Even the teammates who consider themselves gym rats marvel at Bilal.

He’s still not satisfied.

“Coach Mihalich, coach (Akbar Waheed), coach Dobrich, coach Martelli, they brought me up here to win a championship,” Bilal said.

“They believe in me, and I don’t want them to be disappointed. They’re the reason I’m always in the gym.”

Contact reporter Jonah Bronstein at 282-2311, ext. 2258.



Siena (21-4, 14-0 MAAC) at Niagara (13-13, 6-8 MAAC) • 8 p.m. • Radio: WGR 550 • TV: ESPN2



See Thursday's edition of the Niagara Gazette for Jonah Bronstein's scouting report on Niagara and Siena.

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