Bennies start season with Tip-Off tournament victory

CSB’s basketball team was victorious this weekend in their season Tip-Off Tournament.

On Friday, Nov. 12, they beat Minnesota-Morris by a score of 64-57. On Saturday, Nov. 13, they triumphed over Bethany Lutheran College 87-66.

A couple players stood out this weekend for the Bennies.

Junior Tori Szathmary had 23 points and 18 rebounds between the two games, including 17 points and 10 rebounds against Bethany Lutheran.

Junior Gabby Martin also played extremely well, scoring a team-high 27 points. If you look at the Bennies’ roster, you will notice that 13 of their 21 players are underclassmen.

Some may say that having a young team puts you at a disadvantage, but Coach Mike Durbin looks at it from another angle.

“Whenever you have youth, it energizes your program,” Durbin said. “They are sponges for new information, and they really enjoy the time they spend together.”

A young squad has brought the team a lot of much-needed energy so far this year. This attitude isn’t just at game-time.

Senior Maddie Doran knows that energy is always important.

“You have to win the warm-up, being competitive from the start,” Doran said. “Bringing that mentality and focus is key.”

Competitiveness from the start was a big reason for the Bennies’ success in this tournament.

In both games, they outscored opponents 42-24 in the first half.

Youthfullness proved to be useful in their first two games, as four of the nine players who scored for the Bennies were underclassmen, including 23 points from sophomore Carla Meyer, 16 points from sophomore Lydia Hay and 14 points apiece from freshmen duo Sophia Jonas and Olivia Boily.

Meyer had a great weekend, filling up the stat sheet with fourteen rebounds, nine assists and four steals.

The Bennies did a couple of things particularly well last weekend. First, they did a great job of controlling the boards. They outrebounded opponents 88 to 76, being led by Szathmary, who had 18. They also won the turnover battle, forcing 34 turnovers from opponents while only committing 26 themselves.

Another thing that impressed Durbin was their selflessness.

“We shared the ball very well on offense,” Durbin said.

The Bennies had 30 assists compared to their opponents’ 19 in the tournament, so that was another area they excelled in. They also have tremendous depth. Ten different players appeared in games this weekend and the captains have faith in the whole roster to win them games.

“We have a lot of people who can score and make things happen,” senior Kate Seyer said. “A lot of people scored this past weekend, and that is especially good to see early in the season.”

It’s tough to win a lot of basketball games when you are allowing a lot of points. Defense has been a huge area of improvement this year, especially for Seyer.

“We definitely have had a lot more defensive drills with high attention to detail this year,” Seyer said.

Even if the team is having a bad offensive game, they can still win by playing defensively.

“You can’t always control if your shots are dropping but you can always control your defense with effort,” Doran said.

In the 2020-21 season, the Bennies allowed 70.6 points per game.

So far this season, they have only allowed 61.5 points per game.

It is easy to see that the additional time they have spent working on defense has paid dividends so far.

Although the Bennies went 2-0, not everything was perfect.

They had rough third quarters, getting outscored by opponents 41-34 in those quarters.

They also struggled from the free-throw line, shooting a mere 63% from the charity stripe.

Despite these minor struggles, Durbin is very excited about this young squad’s potential.

“We will be as exciting as any team we have had in recent years,” Durbin said.

The Bennies are a young and exciting team, and it will be fun to watch fans cheer them on in Claire Lynch Hall the rest of the season.