Franklin’s Erica Buening, right, shoots the ball during Thursday’s game against visiting Mt. Vernon.
CHRIS WILLIAMS | FOR THE DAILY JOURNAL
New season, same song.
The Franklin girls basketball team demonstrated a flair last season for driving a stake through opposing team’s hearts with quick scoring avalanches, something often referred to as “spurtability” in broadcasting parlance.
On Thursday evening, the Class 4A No. 5 Grizzly Cubs did it again, scoring 10 points in a 42-second span during the third quarter to take control of what wound up as an 80-52 season-opening home win over Mt. Vernon.
Already in front, 42-26, Franklin got the decisive blitz started with a Scarlett Kimbrell 3-pointer at the 4:53 mark of the period. Erica Buening added a corner 3 just 22 seconds later, and consecutive steals by Ashlyn Traylor led to layups, one from Kuryn Brunson and the other from Traylor herself.
Just like that, the Marauders were in a 26-point hole.
“We can go on runs pretty quickly, especially with the pace that we like to play at and how much we like to shoot the 3,” Franklin coach Josh Sabol said.
The Grizzly Cubs jumped on top early, riding two 3-pointers from Lauren Klem and another from Traylor to a 9-0 lead in the first 3:14 of action. Kyndell Jochim added two more 3s off the bench to stretch the margin to 17-3 late in the opening quarter.
Mt. Vernon settled down a bit, getting its first field goal with 22 seconds left in the first period and getting as close as nine on a couple occasions in the second quarter, but Franklin was able to keep the visitors at arm’s length. Brunson, who was on the bench for a good chunk of the first half after picking up two early fouls, scored the Grizzly Cubs’ final seven points of the half, including two foul shots with 3.9 seconds left to make it a 34-21 game at the intermission.
That was as close as the Marauders could get for the balance of the evening. Franklin scored the first seven points of the third quarter to build the lead to 20 points at 41-21, and after an Ellery Minch 3-pointer brought Mt. Vernon to within 16, the Grizzly Cubs used the aforementioned 10-point run to put the contest out of reach.
“I really like how we came out in the third quarter and really took it to them,” Sabol said.
The margin grew as large as 29 later in the third, and after a Mt. Vernon run early in the fourth quarter got it as close as 17, Buening and Brunson combined on another 8-0 spurt to extinguish any thoughts of a larger comeback — and spark a “We want UConn” chant from the Franklin student section.
While the Grizzly Cubs probably aren’t ready to take on the Huskies just yet, Thursday’s victory was a nice jumping-off point for what the team hopes to accomplish this winter.
“We’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve got to clean up,” Sabol said. “We fouled too much and we were pretty bad on some of our rotations. But that’s what’s great about coaching — now we’ve got stuff that we’ve got to work on and get ready for Saturday (at Columbus North).”
Brunson paced Franklin with 17 points, followed by Buening and Traylor with 15 apiece. The Grizzly Cubs, the nation’s top 3-point shooting team last season, finished with 15 makes from behind the arc.
Klem finished with nine points, followed by Kimbrell, Jochim and Josie Rae Phillips with six each. All of the points from those four came on 3-pointers.
Saturday’s game in Columbus continues a stretch of five games in nine days to start the season.
“It’s going to be a lot,” Brunson said. “We’re going to definitely have to recover, take time to take care of our bodies, but I think it’s exciting to get off to this kind of start where you’re playing pretty good teams back to back to back. It’s only going to make us better.”
