If women’s basketball needs someone to grab a rebound, deflect a pass, draw a charge, hit a late-game shot or crash into the scorer’s table to save a loose ball, just look for No. 20.

Redshirt junior forward Jenna Thorp has made key plays throughout the season, even though they mostly go unnoticed.

“She’s a blue-collar player,” said head coach Kathi Bennett. “We always talk about the X-factor players. X-factors are the kids that get every 50-50 ball that’s in their vicinity, keep the ball alive: a lot of the things [that] don’t show up in the stats. And I just think Jenna’s that type of kid … That’s her M.O. That’s her mentality. That’s kind of who she is, and she accepts it.”

In a 12-second sequence on Jan. 12 against Eastern Michigan, Thorp missed a shot, grabbed the offensive rebound, missed a shot again, fell hard to the floor, got up, hustled to the other end of the court and grabbed the defensive rebound.

Bennett said the series of unrelenting play was the essence of what Thorp — who has played in all 14 games and started eight since returning from an injury — does on a nightly basis.

“Sometimes her stats might look a little bit ugly, but she does all the hustle-factor things,” Bennett said. “She really hustles and makes things happen. … She would trap and dig and get her hands on a lot of deflections; those are stats that we keep, but it doesn’t look good in the paper. … She does that for us all the time.”

In other instances, she has fought for loose balls and rebounds, drawn charges in transition, and even went crashing into the scorer’s table against Buffalo on Thursday, successfully saving the ball to a teammate.

“I like that type of stuff,” Thorp said. “Not necessarily something that might … show up in the stats, but that one extra dive after the ball and get that extra possession and someone knocks down a 3. That goes a far way in the end.”

At 5-foot-11, she is undersized for a power forward, but she still makes her presence felt inside with tough, intelligent play. She has averaged 7.3 rebounds per game in conference play, which is No. 14 in the MAC.

“She has a high IQ,” said junior forward Natecia Augusta. “She’s good at passing out of the post. She’s got a good jump shot. She brings a lot of hustle. She hustles for every ball that’s in her area. She also has the willpower to fight through being tired, which a lot of us struggle with.”

Thorp has been known as a defensive player in her three seasons at NIU, but she has shown flashes of offensive brilliance.

After sitting out the first three games of the season due to injury, she made her season debut on Nov. 21 against Bradley. Not only did she finish with 10 points and two rebounds in 19 minutes, but she hit a corner jumper with 1:31 to play, which proved to be the game winner.

On Jan. 18 at Miami (Ohio) she hit a 3-pointer with 39 seconds remaining and the shot clock winding down. The Huskies went on to win by three, 69-66, and Bennett called it “the play of the game” and the reason “why we won.”

“I think a lot of times it just comes with the flow of the game,” Thorp said. “Not thinking about it, just knowing that you gotta knock it down when it’s open. I think that’s the biggest key for me: just not thinking about things; just when you get a pass you know you gotta knock it down.”

She scored in double figures twice this season, most recently on Thursday, when she scored 12 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for her first career double-double.

“She’s definitely a good shooter,” Bennett said. “She works on her shot. When she gets in a rhythm, that’s her game. … She has her moments where she had a double-double and shots went down. She’s one of the hardest working kids I’ve ever coached.”