Goal oriented

Penns Grove’s Horace marching towards 1,000 career points on the way to a deep run in the playoffs

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

PENNS GROVE – Meely Horace really wants 1,000 points. And she really wants a championship banner.

There’s no reason those two items have to be mutually exclusive.

The Penns Grove senior guard moved a little closer to that personal goal and helped her team gain a lot of power points for the other when she went for 22 points to earn Player of the Game honors in the Red Devils’ 63-27 rout of Group IV Bridgeton in the only girls game of this year’s Red Devil Classic.

She now has 747 career points after two games this season. At her current pace – 19 points a game – she’s reach the milestone sometime late next month.

Just how much does she want it? She has 1K written on one of her pairs of shoes. She figures averaging five points a quarter should do the trick.

“I want to get to my 1K, my 1,000 points,” she said. “I want to break the record for them. It’s been a while since somebody hit 1K. I want to do that before I leave.”

There’s banner hanging high on the gym wall containing the names of the six 1,000-point scorers in Penns Grove girls basketball history, The last name went up in 2018 (Natrice Reed, 1,065).

There’s a piece of tape covering the next line on the banner. No one will say what the tape is covering, but it’s presumed that’s where Horace’s name will go when she hits the number.

“She’s going to get her 1,000 points and we want her to get that,” Red Devils coach Jennifer Denby said. “This is why we’re trying to coach her so she can become a better player mentally and physically on the court. 

“It is reachable. She most definitely is going to get her thousand, but she wants to win a championship. This is why we’re doing all this work now.”

Denby knows a little about scoring points as the all-time leading scorer in the Rowan women’s basketball program. She’s personally placed four of the six names on the banner during her tenure.

Meely’s mental toughness was put to the test early in the game. The Bulldogs held her scoreless in the first quarter and she admitted her game was “all over the place” in the early going. But as the game went on she fixed her mistakes, became a defender and turned it into offense to help her team.

Even as she struggled to get on track, the Red Devils were building a 13-2 lead in the first quarter. In the second quarter she hit a couple 3s and Penns Grove extended the lead to 13 at halftime. She scored 13 points in the second half.

“Meely did struggle in the first half,” Denby agreed. “We pulled her off and talked to her and she got back in there and did her defense assignment, and she played offense. So, she deserves that reward that she got.”

And a bigger reward is yet to come.

PENNS GROVE 63, BRIDGETON 27
BRIDGETON (0-2) – Diara McGriff 0 0-0 0, Karina Perez 0 0-0 0, Alyanna Ridgeway 0 0-0 0, Kahmya Johnson 0 0-0 0, Adelina Wilks 3 11-12 17, Madison Garner 0 0-0 0, Kimona Notice 1 0-0 2, Imara James 4 0-2 8, Jayla Bowman 0 0-0 0, Tatiyanna Crawford 0 0-2 0. Totals 8 11-16 27.
PENNS GROVE (2-0) – Syanna Robbins 0 0-0 0, Brianna Robbins 5 1-7 12, RaNiyah Wilson 7 0-0 17, Arianna Dowe 1 0-0 2, Amani Taylor 1 0-0 3, Semijah Hines 1 0-0 2, Meely Horace 8 3-6 22, Zoey Caesar 1 2-2 4, JaNiyah Cummings 0 1-2 1, Jamira Lewis 0 0-2 0, Ruiande Delva 0 0-0 0, Totals 24 7-19 63.