Carmel suffers tough loss to Benet

Her Benet Academy teammate Annie Gallagher took a hard tumble early in the fourth quarter and bumped her head on Carmel Catholic's court.

And with as physical as the East Suburban Catholic Conference basketball game was, Nikki Bell could have gotten her bell rung too trying to free herself for the game-winning shot.

For one of the few times, however, no Carmel defender was able to reroute a Redwing to disrupt the timing of a play. Bell navigated through screens by Jess Pavlinec and Ashley Veselik, took a pinpoint pass from Annie Doyle and sank a left-wing jumper with 10 seconds left, providing the winning margin in Benet's 32-30 win in Mundelein on Saturday.

"They're our best screeners," Bell said of Pavlinec and Veselik. "They did an awesome job. I don't even know how I got open. The defense on Carmel was so hard to get through."

Carmel (12-8, 2-4) had one last chance to pull even, or win with a 3-pointer. The Corsairs inbounded after a timeout and got the ball to go-to scorer Tiffany Hendrickson, but she had the ball knocked loose.

Fittingly, the game ended with a scramble on the floor.

"This game was like playing a bunch of football players," Bell said with a smile, meaning no disrespect to Carmel. "We were like tackling each other trying to go for the ball."

"It was a very physical game," said coach Peter Paul, after the Redwings (11-9, 5-2) earned him his 502nd career win. "I thought both sides played great aggressive 'D.' The ball was on the floor and people were on the floor. Give credit to Carmel. They played exceptionally good defense. They were in our face consistently. It was one of those games where it was very hard to get a basket."

Lauren Lehocky's buzzer-beating 3-pointer had Carmel up 8-4 after one quarter, and Hendrickson's 2 free throws with 1.4 seconds left in the first half knotted the deliberately paced game at 16-16.

Benet outscored Carmel 10-6 in the third quarter but fell behind 28-26 when Corsairs freshman Jackie Meier scored a breakaway layup with six minutes left in the fourth. Benet responded with buckets by Brianne Riley and Bell.

"They run their stuff very well," Corsairs coach Ben Berg said. "He does a great job. Their kids are very disciplined. I mean, there were moments in the game where they had 45 seconds or one minute of possession before they shot the ball."

Hendrickson got a steal in the final minute and hit a pull-up jumper with 35 seconds left to pull Carmel even at 30-30.

But Benet eventually worked the ball to Bell. Paul would have preferred that his team took more time off the clock, but Bell got the ball in her rhythm and fired, and that was fine with her coach.

Bell finished with a team-high 10 points.

"In all honesty," Paul said, "Nikki's our go-to player when the chips are down."

"Usually during the last couple of seconds our coach will run that play," Bell said. "I was wide open. I just didn't really think about (the shot) and just took it, hoping it would go in"

Lehocky and Hendrickson scored 11 and 10 points, respectively, for Carmel.

"I was proud of how we played at the defensive end of the floor," Berg said. "I think we probably spent 60-65 percent of the time down there because they were so patient with the ball."