MARYVILLE - The law of averages is a funny thing.
Maryville has been shooting a lowly 20.6% from three for the season, which ranks last in the conference. Tonight, the Scots shot 42.9% while Huntingdon shot a mere 3-17 (17.6%) from beyond the arc. It was the confidence boost that Maryville needed, getting back on track after their loss on Tuesday to conference leader Piedmont. The Scots led almost wire-to-wire in their 68-58 victory, leading for a total of 38:26 after taking the lead 5-4 with 8:26 remaining in the first quarter.
"That's the key for us." Coach Darrin Travillian noted, "We don't need to shoot 21 of them, right? If we would have shot 14 more, we might have made one of them. We took good ones, and we took them with confidence and within our offensive sets. The whole game for us is shot selection, and we did that well tonight"
Sophomore
Ella Tharpe got back on track with her 18 points on 7-11 shooting, marking her seventh game out of the last eight scoring in double figures.
Ella Haney,
Emily Allen, and
Reagan Brown all scored double digit points as well, scoring 11, 10, and 10 respectively. Brown's 10 are a career high for the freshman.
Kadence Stoner was the leading rebounder, bringing down six on the night in addition to her six points.
The Scots forced 20 turnovers on eight steals, marking the 13th game this season that they have forced that amount of turnovers in a game. They were able to score 17 points off of those turnovers, along with 11 second chance and 11 fast break points.
Looking ahead to tomorrow's game with LaGrange, Coach Travillian remembered the last meeting between the two teams:
"You know, when we played LaGrange the first time, we led for 39 minutes and 20 seconds and managed to lose. We've got that stuff at the end of the game that we need to clean up, especially the turnovers. That is what we have to do better on tomorrow to win the game. We can't have another 20 turnover game and expect to win, it really is the one thing that bothers us the most."
Maryville improves to 7-4 in conference play, which currently puts them tied for fourth in the conference with Belhaven. LaGrange sits at sixth in the conference at 4-6 overall.
