When sophomore Grace Wolgemuth huddled together with the girls’ basketball team on Tuesday before their game against Benilde, she couldn’t help but notice some players missing due to sickness.

The Orioles beat the Benilde Red Knights 63-46, improving their record to 7-11.

According to Wolgemuth, beating Benilde was a great accomplishment for the team.

“This is the first time in a very long time that we’ve beat (Benilde), so it’s really nice to actually beat them and we’re on our home turf, so it’s pretty cool to beat them,” Wolgemuth said.

Head coach Brian Massie said the team played a solid game on Tuesday.

“We have been trying to stay consistent both offensively and defensively and (the team) handled (that) great and I’m very proud of that,” Massie said.

Wolgemuth said while the team performed well, she sees room for improvement.

“Our defense was really good, especially our helpside. We got to to the rimline to the middle of the court so that we could stop their drives,” Wolgemuth said. “I think we need to pick up our defense and pick up our free throw percentage because that will hurt us in the end if we don’t put them in.”

Massie said the lack of some players pushed the girls to work harder during their game against Benilde.

“We had a starter, a key bench player and another bench player that was out due to illness and the girls were able to step up and play with who we had and they used those strengths to help us win,” Massie said.

At last Thursday’s game against Kennedy, sophomore Lindsey Olson said the team showed their progress in improving their defense.

“Our team goal is to be a defensive team, to sprint back, sprint to close outs and to always box out and fight for the rebound,” Olson said. “In practice we’ve been doing a lot of rebounding competitions and we scrimmage and work on our different defenses.”

Olson said she sees improvement from previous years, surprising many of their opponents.

“This year the other teams expect us not to be as good as we are and we think we can beat most the teams in our conference. So far we’ve beaten Richfield and Jefferson, which was big for us,” Olson said.

According to Massie, support from the crowd allows the girls to play better.

“Support especially at the home games helps out the team and getting as many people in (the gym) only gives us more energy and more to play for. So if we can get everybody at those games, that would be awesome,” Massie said.

The Orioles’ next game is 7 p.m. Feb. 3 at Park against Cooper.