Benet uses depth to outlast Hersey
The problem when you face the Benet girls basketball team is its depth. There's so much of it that you need to play a darn near perfect game to beat the Redwings ... which nobody has been able to do all season.
Hersey was the latest team to realize all that Friday in the second round of the 11th annual Montini Christmas Tournament.
Two years ago the Huskies upset Benet in the same tournament, and for awhile, thanks to a suffocating zone, it looked like lightning might strike twice.
But Benet's cast of thousands rose to the occasion en route to a 52-42 victory.
The top-ranked in state and nationally ranked Redwings (14-0) got 20 points from its bench to offset a slow start by senior guard and DePaul recruit Kendall Holmes and counteract a 15-point night by Hersey junior point guard Mary Kate Fahey.
Big minutes were turned in by supporting cast players like senior Lindsey Rogers, a UIC recruit who scored all 6 of her points in the first half. She also grabbed 5 rebounds.
Another senior, Wisconsin-Oshkosh recruit Allison Forney, chipped in 8 points, while junior Molly Sheehan overcame the zone by canning a pair of 3-pointers.
"We're blessed to have all this depth, and if one person isn't feeling it tonight, (Benet coach Joe Kilbride) can put almost any player on the bench in," Rogers said.
"We have a ton of depth and practices are super competitive," said Forney, who like Rogers was a member of the team two years ago that lost to Hersey.
Hersey's zone translated to a 17-12 lead after the first quarter, but Benet's last basket, a layup by Rogers with 49 seconds, spurred a run of 15-2. As a matter of fact, she hit Benet's first two shots in the second quarter, and while the best Hersey could muster was a pair of buckets, Benet senior forward Brooke Schramek went on a personal 7-0 run during the middle of that big spurt.
The Redwings added a 9-2 run in the third quarter but couldn't quite shake the dogged Huskies. In fact Hersey pulled to within 38-34 with 6:20 to go, thanks to a three-point play by senior Jordan Carlquist.
Benet wouldn't be denied, however as Holmes scored 6 of her 8 total points in the final 5:52, while Schramek, a Wisconsin recruit, added 4.
It was a loss, but a good barometer game for Fahey, who was the only member of Hersey's team that was on the squad that knocked off Benet two years ago.
"At every point of the game, you're thinking, We can win, we're going to win, so once we got it to within four we were all very excited, but we knew we had a lot of work to do to close it out, " Fahey said. "We didn't close it out, but we got close, and that's all you can ask for. Playing the No. 1 team in the state is exactly what we came to this tournament for."
Her coach, Mary Fendley, agreed.
"Just the fact that we had chances and got good shots, sometimes it's harder to get the shots than to make them," she said. "They are an excellent team and we'll take a lot of good stuff out of this."
Carlquist chipped in 8 points for Hersey (11-5), which got outrebounded 24-18.