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 who entered 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 five 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 like 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,” 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.”
This year’s Morgan State team is a more diversified bunch with three players entering the game averaging double figures in points. But the team lacks the catalyst that Mitchell was last season as a senior.
“She had great energy at all times, and that’s what we need from the other players on the floor at all times,” senior forward Dahnye Redd said. “That’s who Chelsea was.”
The 5-foot-11 Redd paced the Bears with 16 points, four rebounds and two steals, but she was the only player to reach double digits in scoring. Sophomore point guard Ja’Niah Henson and junior shooting guard Ashia McCalla — who join Redd as the offense’s top three producers — finished with two and four points, respectively, on a combined 3-of-19 shooting, including 0-of-11 from behind 3-point range.
Henson, who had averaged 14.8 points, was in foul trouble throughout the game, collecting her fourth foul with 7:32 left in the third quarter and her fifth and final foul with 8:58 remaining in the fourth. McCalla, who had averaged 13.3 points, had six rebounds and four assists, but shot below 38 percent for the fourth time in five games.
“I needed them a lot, and they know that,” Redd said. “We need them. They’re an integral part of our offense and team. So we needed them a lot.”
As an offense, Morgan State was held to a season-worst .243 shooting percentage (17-of-70) that included a .091 conversion rate on 3-pointers (2-of-22). The team did not drain its first 3-pointer until senior shooting guard Sydney Searcy hit one with 3:35 left in the third quarter after missing its first 14 attempts.
Grace said the Bison primarily used a zone defense to test the Bears’ long-range accuracy.
“We knew that they were really effective getting to the glass and the rim,” she said. “So we were trying to limit those opportunities for them, and today it worked.”
Owsley said the offense’s struggles on offense bled into its breakdowns on defense.
“After we stopped making shots, it became a bad day,” she said. “We stopped playing defense when we stopped making shots, and it was a snowball effect after that.”
The Bears will get another shot at Howard on Sunday at 2 p.m. at Hill Field House as part of the MEAC’s back-to-back scheduling during the coronavirus pandemic. Redd called the lack of wait “a great thing.”
“We don’t really need time,” she said. “We know what we need to do, and we’re happy there’s a game tomorrow and that we don’t need to wait until next time.”