Too much Thornton for Bears
Howard standout powers Bison to easy win in MEAC opener
Last winter, when the Morgan State women’s basketball program needed a key basket, rebound or steal, it could turn to senior forward Chelsea Mitchell, the Columbia resident and Atholton graduate who led the team in scoring, rebounding and steals en route to being selected to the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference’s first team.
On Saturday, the Bears ran into a league opponent that has its own spark.
Senior forward Jayla Thornton led all scorers with 21 points to power visiting Howard to a 73-48 thumping of Morgan State in the MEAC opener for both sides at Hill Field House in Baltimore on Saturday afternoon.
The 5-foot-9 Thornton, a member of the conference’s preseason first team whoentered
the game leading the MEAC in scoring at 17.2 points, scored 13 of her points in the first half as the Bison (5-1 overall and 1-0 in the league) enjoyed a 36-23 advantage at halftime that was not seriously threatened.
“Great player,” Bears associate head coach Wanika Owsley said of Thornton.
Owsley ran the team for the second game in a row as head coach Edward Davis Jr. is not expected to return until later in the month after falling ill in the fourth quarter of a 67-63 win against Navy on Dec. 18.
“She did what she was supposed to do,” Owsley said of Thornton. “She knocked down shots, she got to the free-throw line, she really put us in a bind tonight. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to take her out of the game.”
Of Howard’s f i ve 3-pointers, Thornton alone converted four, which was two more than the entire Bears squad could manage. But Owsley said one of Thornton’s stronger assets is her ability to lift teammates such as freshman forward Anzhane’ Hutton (15 points and nine rebounds) and junior shooting guard Gia Thorpe (10 points and two steals).
“She is their go-to [ player],” Owsley said. “Once she gets going, they feed off of her, and that’s what we did with Chelsea. Once Chelsea got going, we were rolling.”
Howard coach Ty Grace said she was surprised to see Morgan State’s defense give Thornton space to shoot around the perimeter. But Thornton speculated that her teammates’ skill at scoring prevented the Bears (3-2, 0-1) from paying too much attention to her.
“I was a little surprised, but it also didn’t catch me off guard because we do have a lot of scoring threats as well,” she said. “A lot of my teammates can do a lot of things too.
“So I knew that if they focused a lot on me, it would allow my teammates to go off. So I felt like they just had to play honest.”
The Bears will get another shot at Howard on Sunday at 2 p.m.