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Energized Benet claims 20th win

The Benet girls basketball team had the juice Thursday night in its nonconference showdown with host Fenwick.

What's the juice, you ask?

"We're the type of team that feeds off each other's energy really, really well," said Redwings junior forward Brooke Schramek. "Coach (Joe Kilbride) is always like, 'We need lots of juice, we need lots of energy.' "

The Redwings road the juice to a 49-39 victory over the Friars to notch their 20th win of the season, rolling with Schramek's 19 points and nearly perfect shooting from the field, along with 12 points and 15 rebounds from senior forward Ashley Konkle. Junior Kendall Holmes added 8 points.

Benet's sophomore game went to triple-overtime, a contest the younger Redwings won 50-49. But don't think the varsity sat around and did nothing during those extra periods. There they were, staying loose and doing coordinated bleacher moves like The Rollercoaster and Peel the Banana, which elicited plenty of laughter.

But when they got on the court, they were all business. Schramek's 3-pointer from the left corner sparked a 12-4 run to start the game, which ballooned to 18-4 with 6:21 left in the second quarter. An 8-2 run in the second put the Redwings (20-5) up 30-16 at the half.

"Coach made a comment to us today to have good energy," Konkle said. "Obviously, we lost to a really good team last time, Michigan City (Indiana) Marquette. I think he just wanted us to bounce back, and we always find ways to have fun with each other."

It looked as if Benet would carry the juice over to the second half, as senior guard Clara Prasse booked a 3-pointer from the right arc to start the third-quarter scoring and advance the lead to 33-16.

And then it looked like Fenwick had the juice. The Friars put together an 11-0 run, highlighted by a 3 from Lauren Hall and 4 points from Elise Heneghan to cut Benet's lead to just 33-27 with 1:41 remaining in the period.

Fenwick (19-9) maintained that 6-point deficit heading into the fourth quarter, but Schramek would have nothing of a lead change. She scored 4 in a 6-0 run to start the final period, including layup off a Konkle rebound with 6:26 left. The closest Fenwick would get would be 9 points.

"We played a great first half all around at both ends," Kilbride said. "I thought in the third quarter, did we get a little tired, did we lose interest? They weren't really sure.

"We kind of let (Fenwick) get going, and they chipped away at it, and pretty soon it's 10 points and they are excited again and you've got to play."

Thanks to Konkle's efforts, the Redwings well outrebounded Fenwick 25-11. Behind Schramek, Benet shot 59 percent, the majority of points coming via the layup due to attacking the basket and hard work down low.

Attacking the glass "is one of the areas we need to get better at," Kilbride said. "When we look at our season as a whole, in particular our five losses, there are two things we need to do work on, and one of them is we need to do a better job on the glass. Hopefully, they took that to heart."

Sure looked like they did, thanks to the juice.

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