STORY ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON CITYOFBASKETBALLLOVE.COM | WRITTEN BY JOSH VERLIN

When Mary Grimes took over the Binghamton women’s program before the 2024-25 season, she knew she had something to work with in Kendall Bennett. 

The 6-foot-2 center from Germantown Academy had played in 30 games as a freshman, averaging 4.1 ppg and 2.6 rpg, putting up consistent production in a reserve role. But something important was missing. 

“When I got the job, she was just waiting for her turn, and her sophomore year she continued to do that,” Grimes said. “She had all the ability, she just needed the confidence.”

Fast-forward to the end of this season, and it’s clear Bennett’s found it. 

The Bearcats’ season came to an end on Monday night in Philadelphia, Binghamton losing to La Salle in the second round of the WNIT. Bennett finished with a 12-point, 11-rebound outing, her 17th and final double-double of the season. 

Just a few days before, she’d piled up 23 points and 16 rebounds in a first-round win over Mercyhurst. 

No longer a young forward looking for confidence, Bennett is the true centerpiece for the Bearcats, a second-team All-America East Conference selection while making the league’s all-defensive team as well. And she’s not done yet. 

Bennett gave a lot of credit to Grimes, the 2023-24 NEC Coach of the Year in the last of her three seasons at Binghamton, for helping her take a massive jump from sophomore to junior year. Grimes inserted Bennett, who averaged 6.3 ppg and 5.4 rpg as a sophomore, into the starting lineup near the end of last season, and she blossomed. 

“She trusted me a lot and she definitely got on me and was very confident in what I could do,” Bennett said of Grimes, “and I really appreciate that because she believed in me from the start.”

In the last game of her sophomore campaign, Bennett scored a career-high 19 points against Bryant, grabbing five rebounds. That set the stage for a junior season where she averaged 14.0 ppg and 10.1 rpg, including seven games of 20-or-more and a new career best of 26 set against UMass-Lowell. Aside from a game against Michigan where she was held to two points and one rebound, Bennett didn’t have any quiet nights — especially on the glass, where she grabbed at least six rebounds in all but two contests.

“She just has a knack for the ball,” Grimes said. “She’s like Dennis Rodman, she understands where her teammates’ shots fall and she’s just able to snatch those rebounds, whether it’s defensively or offensively.”

Her breakout year helped Binghamton to a 20-13 (10-6 America East) record and a berth in the league semifinals, where they lost by four to Maine. 

That was still good enough to earn an at-large selection to the WNIT, a 48-team tournament composed of low-to-mid-major programs who weren’t selected for the NCAA or WBIT tournaments. 

When the bracket came out, Bennett found herself some clear motivation: beat Mercyhurst, and she’d be able to play her first game back home since graduating from GA three years prior. 

“It’s huge, it’s huge,” she said. “This is definitely somewhere we wanted to play [...]  I’ve never played here in my college career yet, so it was definitely fun having my family and friends come.”

La Salle did its best to limit Bennett in Monday night’s playoff game, but she still managed to go 5-of-8 from the floor in 38 minutes of play, contributing two assists, a block and a steal with just one turnover. She knocked down a couple mid-range jumpers, with the rest of her production coming around the rim, including a couple nice catch-and-finishes as she was slipping to the rim. 

For those who hadn’t seen her play since high school, the jump she’d made was clear.

“Man, the growth of her game — this team was focused on stopping her,” La Salle coach Mountain MacGillivray said. “Watching her in high school, she was a blocked shot/put-back kid. And she’s a threat now. Really impressive.”

With one season of college hoops left, Bennett is well on pace to get to the 1,000-point milestone, needing only 224 points to get there. She’d be only the 12th Bearcat to reach the milestone since it became a Division I program in 2001; if she equaled her offensive output this year (462 points), she’d end up in fifth place on the program’s scoring list. 

She’s also on pace to finish in the top five in the program’s overall history (second in its D-I era) in rebounds, while making the top 10 in several other categories, including blocks and field-goal percentage; she’s set to smash the program career shooting record of 51.8%, entering her senior year at 60.1%.

“This season was definitely huge for me, growing,” she said after the La Salle loss. “Things I couldn't even imagine myself doing, but I feel like I definitely accomplished a lot and having my teammates around me, being able to support me is huge, and I just want to build on that next season as I become a senior.”