Photo by Mojo Hill
DEVILS LAKE — The Benson County Wildcats experienced some déjà vu Friday, playing Griggs/Midkota for the second time already in their third game of the season.
“It’s really, really hard to play a good team twice in a week,” Benson County head coach Bryan Kenner said. “They know our stuff. We know their stuff.”
The Wildcats beat G/M 74-40 on Monday. In Friday’s Lake Region Invitational semifinals at the Devils Lake Sports Center, the bracket just so happened to bring the two squads to another meeting. This time, Benson County won 64-38 after fighting through the first half.
The No. 1 Wildcats improved to 3-0 on the year. The Titans fell to 1-2 — with both of their losses against the defending state champion.
“They totally knew what we were doing,” Benson County sophomore Lacie Fautsch said. “And props to their coach; he totally baited us into throwing some of those passes. But good players execute, and that’s what we did today.”
The Wildcats got off to a decent start. But a 7-0 Titans run made it 15-13 at the end of the first quarter.
“We’ve played three games this week. The fatigue is starting to show a little bit,” Kenner said. “Especially our pace, the way we run up and down the floor. We’re going to get tired eventually. We just hope the other team gets more tired. And I think it showed a little bit.”
G/M’s scoring came almost entirely from the three-headed monster of Kelsey Johnson, Jessa Spickler and Kadence Spickler. The Titans made Benson County earn it.
“They’re a quick, really fast team,” Fautsch said. “So we just had to slow things down and run it right and run through it.”
Aubrey Kenner hit three triples to put up 13 points in the first half. Benson County opened the second quarter on an 8-0 run, then finished it on a 7-0 run to grab a 35-19 lead by halftime.
Kaitlyn Maddock and Ella Fossen both made threes in the first half as well, adding seven points each.
But the Wildcats opened the second half sloppily. Missed layups and turnovers resulted in six straight G/M points. It was still a relatively close 14-point game around the middle of the third quarter.
“They brought a ton of help side on the roller,” Kenner said. “They were hedging that screen really hard on our ball-screen stuff. When we were trying to go weak-side, we just weren’t attacking probably the right way. So we weren’t getting the look we want.”
Once Fautsch converted some layups and got back in a groove, though, Benson County settled in nicely. Fautsch scored eight points in the third quarter. After a 22-point performance on Thursday, she finished with 18 on Friday.
The six-foot sophomore already proved herself last year. But she’s adjusted nicely over the last two games, after the Titans held her in check on Monday.
“Well, I stay calm and content and try to get out of my head,” Fautsch said of how she finds success. “Because when I’m in my head, it’s not real good.”
Addisyn Faul also got going in the second half. After just two points on free throws in the first half, she scored 12 in the second half. She’s had a nice tournament so far with 25 points in two games.
Kenner said at the beginning of the season that he was looking for Faul to take more of the scoring load. And the sophomore is doing just that.
“She gets so many points off just kind of going to get an offensive rebound, or getting a steal in transition the other way,” Kenner said. “She’s taken on a bigger scoring role, and it’s a big part for us. I mean, we’ve got a lot of weapons.”
Maddock converted her second triple of the game in the second half. She reached double digits for the first time in this young season.
Maddock is no stranger to that type of game, having surpassed 1,000 career points as a sophomore.
“What’s weird is Katie’s not a selfish player by any means,” Kenner said. “And so, sometimes I’ve got to push her to get her shot. And when we’ve got a lot of scorers around her, sometimes she just kind of sits back. I need her to take some more shots and be aggressive.”
Four of Benson County’s starters reached double figures, with Fautsch’s 18, Faul’s 14, Kenner’s 13 and Maddock’s 12.
The Wildcats are now headed back to the Lake Region Invitational championship game, which they won last year. In retrospect, their early-season tournament title was what kind of sparked the special run they ended up going on.
Big games are nothing new for the 2024-25 Class B state champions.
“We are such a tight-knit group,” Fautsch said. “We’ve been playing with each other since I was in fourth grade, so we just play so well together. We just bond very well, and I think that’s a big key to our success. … I’m super excited for this year and what’s to come.”
Their opponent on Saturday will be the local Four Winds/Minnewaukan, a battle-tested Class A squad.
“Playing our fourth game of the week, we’re going to see how conditioned we are or not,” Kenner said. “But our style of play, we don’t change what we do. We’ll scout some stuff and try to maybe change some things for what they do. But we’re going to play our style. We’re going to get up and down the floor. We’re going to get after it. Tired’s not an excuse for us. When everybody else gets tired, we don’t get tired. We find another gear. And that’s kind of our mantra.”
