Christopher James

Couple of quick hits while last night’s Maryville College game is fresh in the mind.

The road jerseys I mentioned last night on Twitter were worn because they’re all the Scots have left. MC coach Randy Lambert said the win over Milligan was the third straight game his team was clad in black at home. The Scots home whites set in the washing machine for a couple days and became, in Lambert’s words, “permenantly creased.”
Lambert said he expects to have the jerseys back today after sending them off to Bristol to be steamed. Maryville’s final home game is against Piedmont on Feb. 20.

It’s stunning to think this year’s team could be in danger of missing the NCAA tournament. Remember, it was last year’s squad that had the problems. MC started off 4-6, but went unbeaten in the New Year to rally its way into the postseason. This year’s team returned nearly all the major players and even added wing Ben Williamson. The Scots flirted with a top-25 ranking.
Yet, back-to-back losses last week made all those expectations look silly. Last night’s performance was a return to what we expect from MC, but will it be enough to secure a bid? Winning out now must be a given.

Now this looks famaliar.
Maryville College opened up a 52-26 halftime lead on Monday night against Milligan by being aggressive and scoring in bunches. The Scots (17-4) had runs of 8-0, 12-0, and 17-2 in just the first 20 minutes.
Those offensive outburst weren’t so much about 3-point shots (Maryville made just four) but by getting to the rack and the free-throw line. The Scots are already 14-of-17 at the line after shooting just 19 foul shots in that narrow loss to the Buffaloes (9-15) in Johnson City last month. Greg Hernandez and Eryk Watson have 11 and 10 points respectively for the black-clad Scots. Milton Stanley has nine, mostly on drives.
Maryville coach Randy Lambert has also done plenty of platooning as he said he might last week. Seven Scots are in double-figure mintues. Stanley’s second group has proved to be the quicker group up and down the floor, earning him some easy baskets and Brandon McGill a fast-break dunk.

Here’s an interesting story to get you through the holiday doldrums. Remember back when the Maryville College volleyball and women’s soccer teams were playing in the NCAA tournament over in Texas? Scots volleyball coach and athletic director Kandis Schram had some surprise guests for her team’s first-ever appearance in the NCAA second round against Southwestern in Georgetown.

“We’re standing there and I mean their crowd was huge, not hostile, but it’s loud and all of a sudden when they’re calling our team in the announcement I hear this roar,” Schram said. “I look up and our women’s soccer team flew into San Antonio, got two vans, drove over to watch us play. It was incredible.
“It was about an hour and 40, probably 45 minutes, but the fact that they came a day early, gave up practice time to come and support us was an amazing experience. I was so proud at that point as an athletic director. They came in just jogging, ‘woah!’. It was our 30 kids or whatever and coaches compared to, across the net, a buttload of students. They were loud. They were boisterous. They sat behind our bench and cheered for us the whole time. It was neat.”
Despite the cheering section, the Scots dropped the match and two days later the women’s soccer team was sent home as well, losing to Trinty. It was still a fun trip for soccer coach Pepe Fernandez.
“We flew into San Antonio then jumped into vans and rode over to watch the volleyball game,” Fernandez said. “The girls started talking about it and I said, ‘Guys, what’s the chance we’re going to see one of our other teams in an NCAA tournament where we’re this close?’ We had a great time. (They volleyball team) looked like they were pretty excited to have some fans there.”

Tara Heyboer, who tore the ACL in her right knee Dec 2, will be able to return for a fifth year if she wishes, MC women’s basketball coach Todd Wright told me. The sophomore, who was averaging seven points in six games off the bench, played in less than a third of the Scots scheduled contests this year, making her eligible for a hardship waiver. The cutoff would’ve been nine games.

MC Sports Information

Heyboer

“If Tara is here for a fifth year and academically is having to stay a little bit extra at Maryville College to finish up her academics, there is a possibility, yes, that she would be able to get that year back,” Wright said.

The Associated Press is reporting today that research from the College Sports Project shows that, among 88 of Division III’s most selective schools, male athletes do poorer than the average in their first year. Maryville College was not part of this study, although Great South member Huntingdon College is listed as a participant on the study’s website.
Scots spokesman Eric Etchison said MC does not break down athletes’ grade point averages by gender, but that last year “student-athletes were significantly higher than non-student-athletes in GPA.”

The NCAA’s annual convention is schedule for Jan. 13-16 at the Marriott Marquis and Hyatt Regency hotels in Atlanta. The association could approve a “pilot academic-reporting program” for Division III at those meetings, according to the AP report.

Maryville College forward Tara Heyboer, a member of the Great South Athletic Conference’s 2009 All-Freshman team, is done for the season after tearing her right ACL in a 71-68 loss to Carson-Newman on Dec. 2.
“I just jumped up and went to pass and it popped,” Heyboer said Thursday. “I had a pretty good clue (it was torn).”

The sophomore from Seymour exploded onto the court last year, averaging more than eight points and five rebounds per game as a supersub off the bench. Heyboer had scored 42 points in six games this season before being sidelined. She will have surgery Dec. 23.
“I was just really upset and kind of felt bad for my team cause i couldnt help them anymore,” Heyboer said.

After growing up as a University of Maine fan, It’s sad to hear that fellow Colonial Athletic Association member Northeastern is dropping football. Maryville College assistant Luke Ewalt, who spent 2008 (a season that included a near-upset of Syracuse at the Carrier Dome) coaching the Huskies receivers, said he found out about the Boston school’s decision Sunday. He has it right when he says it’s a “shame. It’s a place with a lot of potential and history.”
It’s kind of amazing to think how insanely expensive football can be compared to almost any other sport, particularly at the Division I level. I once interviewed for a job at Xavier, which doesn’t have football. The Musketeers’ sports information staff, from director to intern, is exactly four. Compare that to the legions Tennessee deploys in the press box every Saturday. Obviously, that’s just a small part of an overall athletic budget, so multiply those extra employees through each support department, and it adds up. That’s even more true today when smaller, private schools are being forced to cut entire sports to stay afloat.

I got a chance to stop by Maryville College men’s basketball practice today and coach Randy Lambert told me he’s hoping his team can sneak into the D3hoops.com Top 25 with a pair of wins this weekend. Lambert said he believes his team belongs in the rankings despite not getting a single vote in the preseason poll.

“There are upsets all the time,” Lambert said. “Preseason ranking don’t mean much, especially at our level. There’s almost no regional crossover.”
The Scots (2-0) picked up one of those early upsets Wednesday, knocking off No. 21 Centre College (0-1), 72-70, in Danville, Ky. Six ranked teams have already dropped games in the first week, including No. 5 Richard Stockton.
A return to the rankings would be MC’s first since March 2, 2008, when it checked in at 19th with a 24-2 record.
Lambert and the Scots will host the first annual James C. Campbell Memorial Tournament this weekend, featuring LaGrange, Wabash and Webster. Maryville will play Webster on Saturday at 7 p.m. inside Boydson Baird Gymnasium before tackling Wabash at 4 p.m. Sunday.

Just who is Paige Sevier, anyway?
The junior transfer made a statement yesterday, hitting four quick 3-pointers in two minutes in her first game for Maryville College, a 66-54 win over Methodist University. Sevier is one of 11 newcomers on this year’s roster, several who have come on board from coach Todd Wright’s former stops at Oliver Springs High School and Roane State Community College.

“I played for (Wright) my freshman year and then he came here my sophomore year and then I came back to him,” Sevier said. “It was a big decision ‘cause I’m two and a half hours away from home now. It’s different from Roane State. It’s the community college and then coming here. But I like it.”
The sharpshooter knocked down 3’s at a 35 percent clip over two years with the Raiderettes, shooting nearly 40 percent from beyond the arc in 27 games last year. Sevier led Jackson County to the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association Class A semifinals as a senior in 2007, helping the team to 22 wins before falling to eventual state champion Gleason, 50-22.
Wright saw something in the 5-foot-8 guard then and he has her back on his roster now.
“She can play,” Wright said after Sunday’s win. “Hopefully people saw it today. She makes shots and she rebounds and plays pretty good defense. I recruited her at Roane State when I was there and she had a great career there for two years and has come over here and started adjusting and starting to fit in real well. I think she’s going to be a main weapon for us. There’s no question about it.”

Paige Sevier at Roane State

The MC men make it a clean sweep of Methodist. The Scots cruised through the second half, never being threatened. While the 3-point shooting remained a struggle, MC maintained control with some tough defense and fast breaking. The four triples are the fewest the Scots have had in a game in at least a year.

Hernandez finished with a double-double (25 points, 10 rebounds) and he had plenty of help as four of five starters posted double figures. Watson had 17, mostly in transition.