Miami Christian holds off Florida A&M to win first girls’ basketball state championship
Miami Christian’s 25-point, first-half lead was slowly fading away in the Class 2A girls’ basketball championship and so was its chance to cap the best three-year run in program history with a title. Tallahassee Florida A&M cut the lead down to six in the third quarter and the Victors answered, and then it was down to six again and finally all the way down to three with 4:02 left.
Florida A&M was playing for its sixth championship and had a star guard hunting a 40-point performance. Miami Christian was playing in its first and had one last response ready from its own. Gabriela Bendeck, who finished with 31 points and 12 rebounds, orchestrated one final push to finish off a 73-63 win in Lakeland.
“The point guards steer the ship,” coach Chanel Davila said. “She had to do that.”
With their lead down all the way from 25 points to 62-59 with four minutes remaining, the Victors (17-7) scored the next eight points to hang on and win their first state championship.
Bendeck scored five points in the final four minutes and her breakaway layup with 3:40 left gave Miami Christian the cushion it needed after a nearly three-minute field-goal drought at the RP Funding Center.
Bendeck shot 10 of 15 from the field and 11 of 15 from the free-throw line to outduel star guard Erin Turral, who scored a game-high 36 points in a losing effort for Florida A&M.
“I know if I stress out, my team’s going to do the same,” said Bendeck, who scored her 1,000th career point in her final game for the Victors. “I was trying to calm everybody down.”
She was the steadying presence every time Miami Christian needed one. At the start of the second quarter, the guard scored eight points on a 9-0 run to build the Victors’ commanding 33-8 lead. When the Rattlers (10-3) cut it 49-43 in third quarter, Bendeck scored on a broken possession, then stripped Turral at the top of the key to set up another transition opportunity. When Florida A&M got it back to 61-55 in the fourth, Bendeck made a free throw to end the Ratters’ 6-0 run.
A few seconds later, the Victors’ lead was all the way down to 62-59, though. Davila called a timeout to settle her team down.
“We hugged each other,” the coach said. “We said, C’mon, this is our chance.”
Two years ago, Bendeck arrived at Miami Christian and the Victors immediately became a 2A contender. She guided Miami Christian to its first final four in 2019, then took the Victors to the Region 4-2A championship last year. On Wednesday, she led Miami Christian to a 37-point win in the 2A semifinals to reach the title game for the first time.
On the next two possessions, she committed turnovers. The Victors’ defense bailed her out, forcing Florida A&M into back-to-back misses from three-point range. After the second, Bendeck and Miami Christian did what they do best.
Bendeck leaked out toward midcourt while the Ratters’ shot was in the air and Ziul Gonzalez snared the rebound. The guard peered down the court and saw Bendeck open for a breakaway layup. Twelve of Bendeck’s 31 points came in transition, either off turnovers or long outlet passes.
“These girls are very athletic, they’re scrappy, they like to push the pace,” Davila said. “We want to go, go, go, go, go, like horses.”
It’s what let the Victors roll into the title game and what let them jump out to their massive lead in the championship.
In the 2A semifinals, Miami Christian opened the second quarter with a 22-0 run on the way to a blowout victory. In the first quarter Saturday, the Victors shot 9 of 19 and scored eight points off seven turnovers. At halftime, Miami Christian was shooting 55.6 percent from the field and leading 41-25.
“We just had a lot of good energy,” said guard Enjuliana Gonzalez, who scored 13 points, grabbed six rebounds and had two assists on those outlet passes to Bendeck.
The lead first started to slip in the third quarter.
Florida A&M closed the second on a 6-0 run and Turral, who signed with the Stony Brook Seawolves last year, began the third with a three-pointer. She unloaded for 12 points in the quarter and the Rattlers, who struggled against Miami Christian’s press in the first half, started pressing themselves.
The Victors committed 27 turnovers and Florida A&M attempted 21 more shots than Miami Christian. The Victors’ early explosion — and every extra surge Bendeck provided — let them hang on.
Miami Christian only made three field goals in the fourth quarter and committed seven turnovers, but none of those turnovers came in the final 3:45 as the Victors ran out the clock on a historic win.
With three seconds left on the clock, Bendeck went to the free-throw line one more time and she held up a single index finger as a permanent smile stuck to her face. Finally, she was a state champion.
“That was my last chance to get it,” Bendeck said. “Today was my last game and it was a good memory. I didn’t want it to be like last time.”
This story was originally published February 27, 2021 at 12:24 PM.
