Girls basketball: Briggs’ career-best 27 helps Benet pull away from Young at coach Kipp Hoopsfest

Emma Briggs is never in a hurry.

It can be tempting for a basketball player to speed things up when things get chaotic on the court, to try to do too much too fast. Briggs, Benet’s 6-foot senior and a Furman commit, sticks to her pace.

Briggs has power, finesse and skill uncommon for a high school player at her size. More than anything, though, she possesses poise.

“When I was developing my basketball skills I always remembered to stay calm, cool and collected,” Briggs said. “That is my mindset. When I have the basketball I’m not going to speed anything up. I trust myself with the ball. When I get pressure I don’t freak out.”

Briggs exhibited that cool under pressure Monday.

She scored a career-high 27 points on 10-for-16 shooting along with 12 rebounds. Benet pulled away from a pesky Young opponent for a 58-41 win at the Coach Kipp Hoopsfest at Benet.

Richmond recruit Bridget Rifenburg added 18 points and 11 rebounds for the No. 1-ranked Redwings (19-1), who never trailed in earning their 19th straight win but finally gained separation with a 9-0 run late in the fourth quarter.

“I think we have to go into every game expecting a challenge,” Briggs said. “We have a target on our backs. We got sped up a little more than we normally do, but we calmed down in the second half and controlled ourselves.”

Benet coach Joe Kilbride has come to expect calm and consistency from Briggs.

After Young had cut a seven-point halftime margin to three, Briggs scored seven of Benet’s next nine points to get it back to double digits.

She glided in for a basket in the lane, put back a rebound in traffic, then faked a 3-point shot, drove and flipped a shot through contact.

“She just plays at her pace,” Kilbride said. “She is kind of like our Nikola Jokic. She is a point center, playing at her speed. She is not going to get sped up.”

The comparisons to an NBA star with a European background perhaps make sense for a 17-year-old with a cosmopolitan background.

Briggs’ dad is from Great Britain and her mom is Chinese. While her sister was born in Great Britain, Briggs was born in China before the family moved to the U.S. when she was 4 years old.

When former Benet teammate Lenee Beaumont went to the USA Trials, Briggs sent an email to the Great Britain youth basketball organization, she was invited to tryouts and made the team.

Briggs has spent the last three summers playing for Great Britain in the FIBA EuroBasket competition. This past summer Briggs’ team took sixth in the B Division in the women’s U18 tournament in Lithuania.

“I am definitely undersized there; it has developed my guard skills,” Briggs said. “I can shoot better, dribble and handle the ball better now and I didn’t have that before going there. It’s prepared me for college with the shot clock, the 3-point line is further back and it has developed me into a guard more.”

Briggs has the build of a high school post, and started at Benet at the “five” center position.

But she’s utilized as a guard, and showed a sample of why Monday.

Briggs knocked down two 3-pointers and scored on several drives. And she’s a skilled passer both from the post and facing the basket.

“Her development has been very good; playing for Great Britain helped,” Kilbride said. “She is small with them and the way she plays she’s kind of a guard anyway. She is definitely a three-level kid.”

Benet has the luxury of two of them.

Rifenburg came alive with 10 of her 18 points in the fourth quarter.

It allowed Benet, which recently lost starting guard Sailer Jones to a torn ACL, to overcome an uncharacteristic 4-for-22 from the 3-point line.

“That is the thing, is between Emma and Bridget we have size that can match up to their skills at all three levels. And our smalls are good,” Kilbride said.

“The first half we had about 10 turnovers which is very uncharacteristic but we cleaned it up in the second half. We just didn’t shoot the ball well from distance. We’ve been shooting it much better than that, but you have days like that. If you guard the way we’ve been guarding, you can survive a day like today, and we did.”