By Andy Walter

DOVER — A Catholic Conference girls’ basketball team — even one with a losing record — is preceded by its reputation.

Indeed, no one around Dover High’s program can remember the Senators ever beating one before.

So the 13th-seeded Senators felt a certain sense of accomplishment after pulling away to a 58-40 victory over No. 20 Padua in the first round of the DIAA girls’ basketball state tournament on Wednesday night.

Junior Heaven Robinson netted a game-high 24 points with senior Heaven Hendricks adding 13 for Dover (14-6), which was 0-3 against the Pandas since 2017.

The tough part is that the Senators now have to go to Wilmington on Friday to face an even better Catholic Conference squad — No. 4 St. Elizabeth (18-2) — at 7 p.m.

Even though Padua is now only 8-12, Dover had a lot of respect for the Pandas going into Wednesday’s matchup.

“I think it was a big deal,” Hendricks said about beating the Pandas. “I knew it was going to be a tough game. We just had to fight through it.”

“It feels good,” said Senators coach Jahi Davenport. “But we have a saying here, we don’t let our highs get too high or our lows get too low.

“Playing against a team with that type of reputation, our girls got nervous.

They just know what that entails. They know that they’re disciplined so they have to be on their ‘A’ game until they realized they could play with them. Then they were able to relax a little bit.”

Padua did break out to an early 8-2 lead after starting the contest with back-to-back three-pointers. Dover still trailed by four early in the second quarter.

Finally, though, the Senators went on a 12-0 run to take control. Robinson’s steal and layup gave Dover a 27-17 cushion with eight seconds left before halftime.

The Senators never led by fewer than eight points in the second half, eventually going up by as many as 21.

“When we started picking up the pace, getting more steals, turning them into layups,” Hendricks said about what helped Dover take control.

“We just had to play hard, play to win,” said Robinson. “We were physical with them because we had to. It was a tough game.”

Freshman Sara Benson added nine points for the Senators.

Dover knows that going to St. Elizabeth will be a much bigger challenge. The Vikings’ only in-state loss this winter has been to Ursuline.

Davenport hopes the Senators’ experience of playing teams like Cape Henlopen and Caravel will help them on Friday.

“They’ve seen that type of basketball before,” he said. “If that’s who you know you’re going to end up running into, you’ve got to put them on (the schedule). We try to put our girls in a situation where they have seen every style of basketball by the time they get to this point.”

“I know it’s going to be a tough game,” said Hendricks. “We’ve got to be confident, locked in, disciplined ... everything.”

Follow Andy Walter on Twitter at @DSNSports.