Maryville Wipes Away Wesleyan 74-27; Tharpe Another Double-Digit Game
MACON, Ga. – Maryville's longest winning streak of the season reached three games Friday night after the Scots took care of Wesleyan 74-27 to start a two-game Georgia swing.
Maryville has played its best ball during a critical portion of the schedule, winning four of its last five games and moving alone into third place in the Collegiate Conference of the South standings. The Scots are now 6-11 overall and 5-3 in the CCS. Right behind Maryville with four losses are Covenant (5-4), Belhaven (5-4) and Huntingdon (4-4), and Maryville owns recent victories against all three.
Ella Tharpe continued her fine recent form with a game-high 17 points on 8-of-11 shooting. The sophomore sensation has scored in double-figures a career-best five games in a row, averaging 14.0 points and shooting 69.6 percent from the floor during that stretch.
Game Has Taken Off
Tharpe has her average up to a collegiate-high 8.1 and she is shooting 54.2 percent from the floor for the season. Tharpe's bread-and-butter is that midrange jumper, and she has found the range to really expand her game.
"A year ago. she was our best on-ball defender, so last year as a freshman she started every game and her role was to just go out and I would put her on whoever the best perimeter player was," Maryville head coach Darrin Travillian said. "This year, she still plays that role, but we've asked her to step up and do more offensively and now she's always in the gym getting shots. She's in the gym working one-on-one with me and just making her game better and better and better. Now that we've gotten into the heart of conference play, she has really taken off.
"What's so impressive to me is she's making shots from 15 to 20 feet, the shot that everybody in analytics is telling you don't take anymore and she's out there just filling it up."
CCS Leaders in Scoring Defense
The Scots continue to ride the defensive train during this midseason turnaround. Maryville leads the CCS in scoring defense, allowing 61.2 points per game.
"The biggest thing is defensively, we set a tone right off the bat and we never let our foot off that break," Travillian said. "We are the No. 1 defense in the league, so we're going to hang our hat on that. That's who we're going to be and let's take that challenge. Let's go and guard people, and tonight, all 13 players did it and that's what made it so convincing."
Maryville held Wesleyan to 9, 8, 5 and 5 points in the four quarters of play, allowing the Scots to extend the lead throughout. MC led 22-9 at the first quarter break and 43-17 at halftime before outscoring the Wolves 31-10 over the final 20 minutes.
Second-Best Shooting Night
On offense, meanwhile, Maryville shot its second-best percentage of the season at 50.8 percent. Only 58.7 percent against Warren Wilson was better. The team's 5-of-11 showing beyond the 3-point line was the best percentage (45.5) of the season by a long shot.
"I was happy with how efficient we were offensively," Travillian said. "We looked to throw one more pass to people, and everybody was excited to see everyone else getting an opportunity. Ella Thorpe goes 8-of-11 from the floor. Braxton Fritz was 4-of-4 today and Niles Daniel 3-for-4 – we had a lot of people who were efficient offensively and we spread the wealth, which was fun to watch."
Ella Haney scored 14 points and Fritz added nine. Daniel finished with seven points and a game-high five rebounds as 12 different Scots found the scoring column and 11 different ones grabbed a carom.
The Scots are 10-0 against Wesleyan since this series began in 2018, having now completed five season sweeps.
Agnes Scott Saturday
Saturday, the Scots look to carry this momentum into an afternoon tilt against Agnes Scott. The Scotties lost 82-50 at home Friday to second-place Asbury, dropping to 2-14 overall and 1-6 in the CCS. Tipoff from Decatur is 2 p.m.
"We talked about winning the week," Travillian said. "We had three games – the Covenant home game, which was a tough one; and these two on the road. So our goal has been to win the week, win the week. Now Saturday, we are going to try and finish the deal."