RIBET'S BENNETT GETTING LOTS OF POINTS, LITTLE REST.

Byline: Chris Branam Daily News Staff Writer

In the third quarter, Bob Newton finally decided to glance at the scorebook.

What he saw was a prodigious line of twos that kept growing. Newton, the girls' basketball coach at Ribet Academy, decided to see how long LeAnne Bennett's scoring line would go.

``A lot of times you watch her play (and) you don't realize she's doing that,'' Newton said after Bennett, a 6-foot-0 senior forward, scored 71 points in the Fighting Frogs' 81-23 victory over First Lutheran on Tuesday night. ``It just happened that the way (First Lutheran) was playing us, they weren't double-teaming her much.''

Bennett played the entire game. Newton said that he thought about giving her a rest as the blowout continued.

``I was thinking sitting about her down in the fourth quarter,'' Newton said. ``(But) I'm down to like eight players right now. I don't have a strong bench at all. It's LeAnne scoring about 90 percent of our points.''

Bennett's total is the fourth-highest in Southern Section history. Cheryl Miller of Riverside Poly, the section's all-time leading scorer, had a record 105 during the 1981-82 season against Norte Vista.

Lisa Leslie of Morningside scored 101 against South Torrance during the 1989-90 season and Miller had 77 against Norte Vista during the 1980-81 season.