Photo by Mojo Hill
LEEDS — A little under nine months ago, the Benson County girls’ basketball team returned home with the program’s first state championship since 1987.
But their reign of glory isn’t over.
“This is a special group,” Benson County head coach Bryan Kenner said. “I tell people all the time, like, it really is special. They love each other. They love basketball. They’re work-a-holics. It’s a dream to coach.”
The Wildcats’ entire starting five is back. They were unanimously voted the preseason No. 1 by the NDAPSSA. Four of their starters were also key players on the volleyball team that went 30-5 this fall.
Times are bright in the Leeds and Maddock home gyms.
“I’m big on having fun,” Kenner said. “But we work hard, and we really focus when we’re doing stuff. … They’re a fun-loving group, but they’re very serious when it comes to their basketball. They want to get after it.”
On Monday, the Wildcats took the floor at Leeds High School for the opener of their title defense. They beat Griggs/Midkota 74-40 to get things rolling with a 1-0 record — following up last year’s 26-2 mark.
“We transitioned really well tonight. That’s our game. Get up and down the floor with tempo,” Kenner said. “I thought our defensive pressure was pretty good. You can definitely tell we’re probably not in midseason condition yet. But yeah, I was happy with the effort. The team energy was great. The attitudes were great. That’s really important.”
Senior captain Aubrey Kenner — a linchpin to last year’s title run — led Benson County with 34 points.
Neither she nor her dad were entirely sure, but it was one of the top, if not the top, performances of Kenner’s high school career. And she did it in three quarters.
Benson County rode a 16-0 run in the first quarter to get out to a 23-5 lead. Kenner hit two triples as she scored 17 points in the first quarter alone.
“I was really amped up to start,” Kenner said. “I think it was honestly just adrenaline. And I was super excited.”
Kenner comfortably went back for deep three-ball attempts and scored points in the paint when she had to as well.
“We tell all our girls, ‘I want you to play with the confidence of a champion,’” Coach Kenner said. “And we said that even before we were champions last year. … If it’s a good shot, you’ve got to be ready to shoot it. And they actually really encourage each other that way, too, which is really huge for what we do.”
When Kenner finally missed a three, six-foot sophomore Lacie Fautsch was there to put it back. Fautsch scored seven points in the first quarter.
“Addisyn Faul and Lacie Fautsch are huge on the boards,” A. Kenner said. “I feel like Katie [Maddock], Ella [Fossen] and I can just kind of chuck up those long shots, and they’ll get the boards almost every time.”
Kenner’s shooting luck dried up a bit in the second quarter. G/M put some free throws on the board after a series of offensive rebounds, and the Titans cut Benson County’s lead to nine.
“We didn’t rebound super well,” Coach Kenner said. “They got some offensive boards that we shouldn’t probably let them get.”
G/M’s lone senior, Kelsey Johnson, scored 11 points in the second quarter and 16 in the first half.
But sophomore guard Addisyn Faul came up big on the offensive boards for the Wildcats. She scored seven points in the second quarter to finish with nine in the first half. Having started on a championship team as a freshman, Faul is primed to help this squad out a lot on the scoring end.
“Faul is going to have a bigger role this year scoring,” Coach Kenner said. “She had a couple shots that didn’t fall, but she had a couple big buckets. She’s got a nose for the ball.”
To this point, Benson County junior Kaitlyn Maddock had been held to zero points. She surpassed 1,000 career points in last year’s state tournament, and she’s one of the captains this year, alongside Kenner. But she hit one of her signature threes as Benson County went on a 9-0 run, extending the lead to 38-20.
Kenner had 21 points by halftime, with the Wildcats up 43-25.
Coach Kenner gave his daughter some rest in the third quarter. She came back strong, hitting three triples to add 13 points to her stat line.
Kenner enters her senior year having already committed to play at the next level for the University of Mary.
“The coaching staff was amazing, and I really just fell in love with that,” Kenner said. “And their culture is great. I’m really excited.”
She gets one last ride with her hometown crew before heading off to Bismarck next fall.
“I think it was a little bit of a burden off her shoulders. She’s just focusing on basketball now,” Coach Kenner said, “and just finishing her senior season out with a great team.”
Runs of 9-0 and 10-0 extended the Wildcats’ lead to 35 by the end of the third quarter. Ella Fossen, one of Benson County’s premier defensive players, made a three to add to the scoring. Maddock also converted her second triple of the game.
Kenner sat the whole fourth quarter with the lopsided score. Faul, Fautsch and Maddock were in to start the fourth quarter, but it was all bench players by around midway through.
Fautsch rebounded well, but she didn’t convert quite as many put-backs as Benson County is accustomed to. She was held to a lone free throw in the second half and finished with 10 points overall.
“They did a really good job of taking Fautsch away inside tonight,” Coach Kenner said of the Titans. “We were really trying to get her the ball more, and they had weak-side help and doubled her a lot of times. But she got a ton of looks off the offensive glass tonight. She’s super good at crashing the boards for us.”
G/M went on a 6-0 run to get to the 40-point mark. Johnson finished with 21 points to lead the Titans. G/M is a region foe, but not a district foe, of the Wildcats this year.
“Kelsey Johnson, I think, is kind of underrated,” Coach Kenner said. “That’s a good team. I think they’re going to get better as the season goes on. They’re going to be a tough matchup for people, too.”
Up next for Benson County, the team competes in the Lake Region Invitational in Devils Lake this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The Wildcats are also the defending champions of that tournament. At the time of last year’s invitational, they were only just starting to crack the top-10 rankings.
“We know that we’re going to get everybody’s best look every night. That’s part of what we’ve got to do. And we’ve got to be ready for that pressure,” Coach Kenner said. “Last year, we kind of snuck in as a little bit of an underdog. Our expectations have completely changed this year. Now we’re on everybody’s radar. We’ve got to come out sharp. We have to play to our standard, regardless of the competition we’re facing.”
With a slight shakeup to the regions, Benson County now competes in the same district as the Langdon Area/Munich Cardinals — who gave the Wildcats one of their two losses last year, in the region championship game.
“For us to get to our goals, we’ve got to go through everybody,” Coach Kenner said. “And Langdon’s a great team. They got us last year. We’re certainly going to have to go through them again.”
A. Kenner said she enjoys the added pressure. But it’s defense that will be the key to repeating.
“We genuinely just love the game so much,” she said. “And if we come out here and we play the defense that we’re capable of doing, our shots don’t have to always fall. … And I think that’s what really brought us through that state tournament.”
