Family ties lure Danny Bentley from hoops to football to join twin brother, Trey, in Alder lineup

Plain City, OH – There’s a foolproof way to tell identical twins Danny and Trey Bentley apart, and it’s not checking their jersey numbers against the rosters for Jonathan Alder’s football and basketball teams.

Sure, that works on game days, but out of uniform the Bentley brothers are of disparate DNA when it comes to personal preference for the sports at which they each excel.

“Basketball is my favorite sport,” said Danny Bentley, who caught two passes for 55 yards and one touchdown in Alder’s 41-7 win over West Liberty-Salem on Friday night.

Younger  brother – by eight minutes — Trey, disagreed:

“I like football way more than basketball,” he said. “Football is my favorite. It’s just more fun than basketball.”

Second-year head coach Brett Glass is glad to have both Bentleys in his lineup as the Pioneers (1-0) head for an early-season test Friday at Columbus Academy (1-0).

Against West Liberty, Trey Bentley built on a sophomore season of 1,234 receiving yards and 12 TD receptions with a pair of touchdown catches and six grabs for 107 yards.

He also forced a fumble, intercepted a pass and made six tackles, two for a loss, from his spot at strong safety.

Not surprisingly, Trey says the reason he likes football more than basketball is, “because I get to hit people.”

The physical aspect of the sport and exposure to injury is why some eyebrows arched upward around the Central Buckeye Conference this year when Danny Bentley decided to join his brother on the Pioneers’ football roster.

It’s Danny Bentley’s first year playing high school football, but he’s already made a name for himself around the league and around the state.

Two years ago, he rose up with a career-high 20 points in an overtime win against London that decided the CBC regular-season basketball championship, and he remained a fixture thereafter in helping the Pioneers reach the regional finals.

As a sophomore in 2025-26, Danny earned CBC player-of-the-year honors and was a second-team All-Ohio selection, averaging 18.1 points per-game, playing beside his brother in the Alder backcourt en route to the regional semis.

“I decided to play football this year because of a lot of convincing from the big guy,” Danny Bentley said, nodding toward Glass. “I wanted to play at least one season on Friday night with (my brother).”

Alder basketball coach Derek Dicke is fine with his star player — and his starting backcourt — putting on the pads in the fall.

But Dicke did plant one seed that perhaps hints at a bit of anxiety.

“I think it’s great that Danny is playing football,” Dicke said. “We’re not a big enough school to have one-sport athletes, so I think it’s good he’s out there. I also told him, ‘It’s OK to run out of bounds sometimes.’ “

Anyone who’s seen the Bentleys play basketball knows there’s no governor on their respective get-after-it gene. Both seemingly came out of the womb without any toe-in-the-water hesitancy, as evidenced by the marks they’ve made on Alder athletics barely halfway through their high school careers.

At 6-3, 195 pounds, Trey Bentley has attracted football interest from Miami of Ohio and Colgate, while Danny, slightly smaller at 6-2, 180 pounds, is on the basketball radar of Youngstown State, Indiana-Fort Wayne and IU-Indianapolis.

Both have time to play themselves into bigger offers with the respective lead roles they play in their respective favorite sports.

“With football and basketball being back-to-back, there’s a little bit of a challenge there,” Glass said. “That’s especially true when you hope to make a run in the (football) playoffs, so it takes some cooperation between coaches and Derek and I have that.

“We live three houses down from each other and our kids go to school together. We have a lot of respect for each other. We make sure that our dual sport guys aren’t put in the middle.

“If there’s a conflict in June, they go to basketball. If there’s a conflict in July, they go to football. So everybody knows what to expect and it works out fine.”

Glass could say the same of his return to Jonathan Alder after four seasons at Dublin Jerome, where he finished 23-23. Before that, he went 58-17 in seven years at Alder, including five playoff appearances.

He resigned at Jerome to return to his alma mater prior to last season and led the Pioneers to a surprising 11-2 finish on the heels of a 5-6 mark in 2024.

“People ask me, ‘Why did you leave in the first place?’ ” Glass said. “This was all I’d ever known. Sometimes you think you have to push yourself and do something different. I’d been here for 13 years.

“I had a special relationship with the principal at Jerome, who had been here, and we didn’t have to move for me to coach there. But when there was an opportunity to come back here, I didn’t have to think about it very long.”

Friday’s game at Columbus Academy, however, is requiring some hard thinking. The Vikings have defensive lineman Reinaldo Perez, signed to play at Indiana, and coasted to a 36-6 win over Northland in Week One.

Perez’s penetration could cause Alder problems with the jet sweeps it runs frequently, and also utilizes as a decoy to trigger its downfield passing game.

First-time starting quarterback Drew Hughes completed 11-of-13 attempts for 197 yards and four TDs in the season-opener against West Liberty-Salem.

“Drew played great and our receivers played great,” Glass said. “Danny, being that this is his first year, we kept things simple for him and let him stay outside to do what he does best, which is catch the football.

“Trey’s experience gives him a much better understanding of what’s going on. He’s obviously extremely talented, so we’re always trying to find ways to get him involved and move him around a lot.”