Benet loses to Indiana team

Benet enjoys playing girls basketball games against top out-of-state teams. The Redwings just haven't enjoyed the results this season.

The Redwings lost to a team from outside Illinois for the third time, falling to Michigan City (Indiana) Marquette 44-38 at the 29th annual Coach Kipp's Hoopsfest at Willowbrook on Monday night.

"We're playing out-of-state, championship-level teams and that's what we want to play because it makes us better," Benet junior Kendall Holmes said. "And it shows us what we need to work on and stuff that we do well."

This game showed Benet it needs to work on shooting. It made just 16 of 47 shots, with cold spells in each quarter.

Benet led 29-26 with 3:12 left in the third, but Marquette (18-2) - ranked first in Class 1A in Indiana - tied the score by the end of the period and started the fourth with a 13-3 spurt to open a lead the Redwings (19-5) couldn't overcome.

"I don't know how long it was but there was a stretch there in the second half where we didn't score for an eternity," Kilbride said. "It seemed like an eternity."

Marquette features twin sisters Sophie and Emma Nolan, both going to play Big East basketball at St. John's. The Nolans combined for 35 of the Blazers' 44 points. They took 26 of Marquette's 31 shots.

"They were very good," Holmes said of the Nolan twins. "Our goal was to stop them and unfortunately that didn't happen. We were trying really hard to get into gaps or help, but they were very athletic and got by us tonight."

"It was all we talked about in game prep was we've got to load up on them, make them play," Kilbride added. "I thought we didn't do a good job of helping on the post, getting into gaps when they were driving. For whatever reason we weren't recognizing it today."