Young completes comeback win on Benet

Benet was less than 10 seconds away from playing for its second straight Montini Christmas Tournament title.

Then Kiara Lewis played spoiler.

The Whitney Young senior guard first hit a deep 3-pointer with 8.5 seconds left to tie the score. After a Redwings turnover on the inbounds pass, she connected on another long 3 as time expired to give the Dolphins a 61-58 victory in the Tuesday girls basketball semifinal. The Ohio State recruit scored a game-high 29 points.

"My heart was beating fast," Lewis said. "I shot one and missed (with Whitney Young down 3 points) and we got the rebound. The ball got back to me and I was looking for (Isabelle Spingola). But she wasn't open and I said, I've got to shoot it, the time is winding down. And then we got the ball back and I said, we can't go into overtime, I've got to shoot it again and hopefully it will go in and it did. I was like, please make it, please make it."

Benet had taken a 3-point advantage with 40 seconds left after freshman Lauren Stack made a pair of free throws.

"It was a great game," Benet coach Joe Kilbride said. "Kiara made two great shots. I told the kids, she is a very good player and she made two great plays at the end. And we had a little miscommunication on the out-of-bounds play.

"But I'm very proud of the way my kids played. We got down but came back. The only thing we didn't do well was rebound, they beat us on the boards."

Indeed, Whitney Young had 21 offensive rebounds and that advantage on the boards helped the Dolphins build as much as a 9-point lead in the second quarter. But the Redwings fought back, slicing the margin to 3 by halftime after six consecutive points from Elise Stout and a bucket from Kathleen Doyle.

Doyle added a pair of 3-pointers in the third quarter as Benet came all the way back and took a 1-point margin into the fourth. She finished with 18 points.

"Obviously, we want to win this game, but we came to this tournament to get ready for March," Doyle said. "And if we get them again, we are looking forward to that matchup. We are definitely a resilient team, and if we get down, we never stop fighting. We just fell a little bit short."

Stout had 15 points, Kendal Schramek totaled 9 points and 7 rebounds and Katherine Jaseckas added 8 points, 10 rebounds and 3 blocks. Benet will play Hersey in the third-place game at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

"In this tournament when you get to the final four, you are going to play the caliber of teams you would see at Redbird," Kilbride said. "This is a great opportunity to see where you are at around Christmastime."