With the moves they make to the basket, Joppatowne's Zameria Jones and Shakara Head sometimes make it easy to overlook the player running the show for the No. 3 Mariners — newcomer Quay Malloy.
Tuesday night at Fallston, the junior point guard made everyone take notice as she dished out 12 assists to go with 11 points in guiding the undefeated Mariners to a 59-34 victory over the No. 11 Cougars in an Upper Chesapeake Bay Athletic Conference Chesapeake Division contest. It was Joppatowne's second win of the season over Fallston.
Malloy, a 5-foot-5 dynamo, transferred from St. Frances last fall and joined the Mariners in November, but she fit in quickly. She knew the players because she grew up with them, but she gently walks the line between teammate and on-court boss.
"There's a lot of pressure on me," Malloy said. "I know I'm the coach on the court, so I have to keep my composure and just talk to the seniors."
Malloy helped the Mariners, who won the first meeting 56-49 last month, get the jump on Fallston Tuesday night by scoring seven points and handing out a couple of assists as Joppatowne ran its lead as high as 21-9 in the first quarter.
The Cougars (11-4, 4-2 division) cut the margin to 28-19 with a 6-2 run capped by Rachael Holehouse's layup in the second quarter, but the Mariners (14-0, 6-0) were just too quick, too tall and too balanced for Fallston.
Trailing by eight going into the second half, the Cougars scored just 10 second-half points and the Mariners boosted their lead to 44-29 on six straight points from Jones midway through the third quarter.
Malloy has lot of options when she gets the ball and two of her best targets — Jones and Head — combined for 35 points.
"She has great court vision and she handles the ball well," Fallston coach Mike McTeague said of Malloy. "She has the freedom to do all that because the other two guards are so talented and you have to extend that on everybody. If you end up with one person on her, she's going to break your defense down easily."
Joppatowne coach Michael Harris said Malloy has been a great addition to a team that returned much of the talent that won the Class 1A state title last winter, but it took her a while to get up to speed coming into a new program.
"Quay has always been the quickest, fasted person on the team, and really getting her to understand that she's the facilitator, she's the quarterback slowed us up a little bit at the beginning," Harris said. "The first half of the season has been Quay's practice and she's really transformed us now."
J—Malloy 11; Z.Jones 18, Head 17, Lewis-Orr 9, Scott 2, Tourville 2. Totals: 26 5-10 59.
F—Gasior 3, Mattingly 3, R.Holehouse 13, March 11, Compton 2, Brady 2. Totals 13 7-12 34. Half: J, 32-24.