St. Vincent Overcomes Injury to Best Player to Defeat Jackets
With a seven-point lead and eight minutes left in the fourth quarter Saturday, Dec. 10, against Waynesburg, the worst thing that could have happened to St. Vincent’s women’s basketball team became a reality. The Bearcats’ best player, senior Mara Benvenuti, injured her right knee badly defending a fastbreak and did not return for the rest of the game.
The do-it-all senior guard entered the contest with per-game averages of 13.3 points, 7.7 rebounds and 4.7 assists.
While many teams could crumble because of the loss of their best player, St. Vincent head coach Jimmy Petruska was proud of how his team responded. After a made basket by Waynesburg to bring the Jackets within five points, senior guard Hannah Carroll hit 3-pointers on back to back possessions,
“They were huge. She’s been clutch her entire career,” Petruska said. “She hit those shots when we needed her most.”
The two threes, and a two-point jumper by Carroll two minutes later, hampered a Yellow Jacket run that included three straight three-point possessions.
“When [Benvenuti] got hurt, their kids stepped up big,” said Waynesburg (5-3, 3-1) head coach Sam Jones. “They hit some big shots, and that’s usually what happens when your best player gets hurt. Your teammates either collapse or pick her up, and they picked her up in a big way.”
Waynesburg’s comeback continued, though, as the Jackets pulled within one point with 1:35 remaining on a layup by junior forward Addy Knetzer.
Junior forward Babette Sanmartin would then make a layup to pull ahead by three, and senior guard Jasmine Weems would knock down two free throws to give St. Vincent (4-4, 2-1) the 68-61 Presidents’ Athletic Conference win.
“They’re a great team, and we’ll play again,” Jones said. “We’ll look at the film and look at what we can correct. We lost to a good team that made some good adjustments that we weren’t able to adjust to quick enough.”
The Jackets outscored the Bearcats 20-15 in the first quarter, as senior guard Katie Gehlmann and Knetzer scored 13 of Waynesburg’s points.
Petruska then decided to play man defense for the rest of the game instead of the zone the Bearcats ran in the first quarter. Waynesburg relinquished its early lead in the second quarter and scored only 22 points in the second and third quarters combined to enter the fourth quarter down nine points.
“Strategy was not the reason [we won],” Petruska said. “We played straight up man to man. I think will power overall and really just getting after it and understanding what Waynesburg wanted to do helped.”
Jones said his team wasn’t able to adjust to St. Vincent’s defensive change.
“They were prepared, and they did a nice job,” Jones said. “They struggled in the first quarter, but then they switched their defense and did a nice job. We just didn’t adjust mentally soon enough.”
The 61-point performance is the second worst for the Jackets this season, and Jones said his team wasn’t aggressive enough offensively.
“We were too tentative,” Jones said. “They were pressuring the ball a lot, and we just let that bother us more than it should have.”
Knetzer, who leads the PAC in points per game (20.9) and rebounds per game (12.8), said the team needs to be able to “keep the intensity up” after the first quarter.
“I think it’s a combination of shots not falling and starting to relax,” Knetzer said. “When we play well we start to relax and we can’t relax.”
Both teams shot worse than 40 percent from the field and 25 percent exactly from behind the arc.
“It wasn’t the prettiest of games on the stat line,” Petruska said. “But we really held our composure, kept our focus and our will, and we did the simple things pretty well.”
Waynesburg shot 9-18 from the free-throw line compared to St. Vincent’s 15-24 clip.
“Free throws got us; they always do,” Jones said. “We talk about it, we work on it. It’s a bad day from the free throw line, and it cost us. We were nine-of-18 and we lost by seven points, so there’s a substantial part of the game.”
Sanmartin, senior guard Susie Ellis and Weems scored 14, 13 and 11 points, respectively, for the Bearcats.
Knetzer led all players with 13 rebounds and 20 points on 9-20 shooting, while Gehlmann chipped in with 11 points and sophomore point guard Monica Starre dished out eight assists.
Yellow Jacket senior forward Haley Delaney scored 17 points on 7-18 shooting while grabbing eight rebounds. Delaney hit two threes in the fourth quarter to pull the Jackets within one point.
After playing 13 minutes a game off the bench last season, Delaney is averaging nearly 30 minutes a night for the Jackets, scoring 10.1 points per game.
“Haley has been doing a really nice job for us,” Jones said. “She’s been rebounding more than in the past, she’s been playing better defense and the last couple of games she’s really chipped in the scoring. She’s always had the ability to do this in the past, but she’s becoming a much more complete player.”
Delaney’s 3-point shot is one that was relatively unseen in her first three seasons at Waynesburg, but she said the shot isn’t unfamiliar to her.
“It’s pretty much all I did in high school, but coming here, I had a new role,” Delaney said about becoming a post player at Waynesburg to utilize her 6-1 frame. “But this year I was able to play a different role and play in and out. I’ve been working on shooting so when I have the opportunity I can knock them down.”
St. Vincent hosts La Roche College Monday, Dec. 19, while Waynesburg hosts the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg Saturday, Dec. 17. Tip for the Jackets is set for 3 p.m.