Franklin came into the new year facing back-to-back games against the two teams it shared the Mid-State Conference lead with: Mooresville and Plainfield.
Five days after comfortably defeating the Pioneers, the Class 4A No. 9 Grizzly Cubs tightened their grip on the league lead with a dominating 61-39 victory over the Quakers on Wednesday evening.
The win completed a 5-0 homestand for Franklin (16-2, 5-0), which has now won 11 games in a row since an overtime loss in the Johnson County tournament final.
“One of the things that we’ve been able to do in this stretch is we’ve been able to get off to really good starts,” Franklin coach Mike Armstrong said. “We haven’t had to play from behind … it’s always good to play from in front if you can.”
The Grizzly Cubs indeed grabbed the upper hand quickly, using 3-pointers from Lauren Klem, Scarlett Kimbrell and Brooklyn York to take a 9-0 lead in just over two minutes. Plainfield (14-5, 4-1) fought back to within four during a Franklin cold spell, but two more 3s from York and Klem gave the home team an 18-8 cushion late in the first quarter.
Back-to-back 3s from York and Kimbrell pushed the Grizzly Cub lead to 26-10 with 5:26 remaining in the second period, and while three straight turnovers late in the quarter slowed the momentum, an Erica Buening drive with 30 seconds to go made it a similarly comfortable 32-15 heading into the break.
A three-point play from Berkeley Williams to open the third quarter got the Quakers to within 14, but Franklin punched back with a 9-0 spurt — one that started with an Emma Sappenfield 3 and ended with a steal and layup by York — to stretch the margin to 41-18 at the 5:48 mark.
Shot-making came and went throughout the night, but Armstrong was very happy with the defense that his team played Wednesday, continuing a recent run of strong play on that end. Franklin has allowed 50 points just once in the last 11 games, and it smothered a Plainfield offense that came in averaging nearly 60 points a night.
“They’re a pretty good offensive team,” Armstrong said, “and I thought that we played really well defensively tonight. We kind of took them out of some things they wanted to do. I know we’re a team that’s built around scoring and shooting and all of that, but I really felt tonight our defense was really good against them.”
A Klem 3-pointer and a post bucket from Buening upped it to 52-24 after three quarters, and a steal and layup by Aubrey Runyon to open the fourth made it a 30-point game before the Grizzly Cubs started to ease off of the accelerator. The Quakers knocked down a pair of 3s during a late 10-0 run to make the final score more respectable.
York led a balanced Franklin attack with 14 points, followed by Buening, Kimbrell and Klem with 11 each.
The Grizzly Cubs are right back in action tonight against Roncalli, their first road game since Dec. 12.
“I like to play back-to-back nights, because you’ve got to play back-to-back nights to win the sectional,” Armstrong said. “All we want to do is keep refining our stuff, keep getting better, keep showing improvement all the way through.”
