By BRIAN TORTELLA
Correspondent
On X @tortreports
SEWELL — Alivia Mauz thrives in the most challenging settings.
That couldn’t be more evident on Thursday night as the senior scored 19 points to lead ninth-seeded Williamstown to a 39-25 road playoff victory over eighth-seeded Gloucester County Institute of Technology in the opening round of the South Jersey Group 4 tournament.
It was the 27th game this season (out of 28 total games played) that Mauz reached double digits, but in this game, there was something different about her method of scoring. It was just the third contest all season in which she didn’t hit a 3-pointer. In the two other games that she was held to zero threes the Braves went 0-2 and were outscored 108-55.
“Her shot wasn’t going in,” said Williamstown coach Jamie Land. “It was hard. I was trying to tell her to do things other than shoot the three. When she’s having a hard time shooting, she needs to get closer to the basket.”
Mauz was face-guarded for most of the game, forcing her to drive, make layups and draw fouls.
It worked.
Williamstown trailed until late in the first half and took its first lead into the break, 20-18. After the Braves opened the second half on a 7-0 run, the Cheetahs never came within five points of Williamstown’s lead. Mauz scored nine of her 19 points in the fourth quarter.
It was the third time Williamstown (15-13, 3-5 Tri-County Royal)faced GCIT (16-10, 5-4 Tri-County Royal)this season. The Braves won the first meeting, 71-22, on Jan. 3 before falling 46-31 on Jan. 28. Williamstown now travels to top-seeded Lenape for the quarterfinal round on Monday.
“We started off pretty bad in the beginning but we’re more of a second-half team, so I’m glad we came out good in the second half,” said Mauz, who plans to continue her career at West Chester University in the fall. “Getting face-guarded makes it definitely harder to shoot, and you have to shoot it faster. That doesn’t really give me a lot of time to shoot, so driving and trying to get the foul is what I’m going to have to do more often.
“Losing to them last time gave us a lot of wanting to get them back. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, and we knew that they were going to be ready. We were the same way.”
Said coach Land, “for us it was a good comeback win. GCIT is a good team. I’m proud of the girls. From the beginning of the season, I think we’ve grown a lot. I think we can do anything if we put our mind to it. Lenape’s a great team, but it doesn’t mean that we’re out. We can prove it if we take it possession by possession and control the tempo, and take care of the ball.”
“She loves competitive games,” coach Land continued, referring to Mauz. “She would rather play a competitive game than beat a team by 30 every single time. If you notice in our box scores, if we play teams where we know we would win, she doesn’t really score that much.”
Against Lenape, Mauz has a chance to make history.
She’s now just 20 points away from becoming Williamstown’s all-time scoring leader. She currently stands at 1,902 for her career. Nicole McCann, a 1991 graduate, holds the record with 1921 career points. Mauz has scored 632 points this season alone, averaging 22.5 points per game.
Even more impressive about her potentially breaking the scoring record is that she’s been playing with a lingering hip injury since the beginning of the year, according to Land.
“I tore my labrum in my right hip but I’ve been going to physical therapy and it’s been getting better,” Mauz said. “I’ve been playing through it, but it’s been pretty bad in the middle of the season. It’s getting better now.”
“I can’t say enough about her. I’ll never have a player like her again,” Land said. “She’s so special. She can handle the ball. I’ve never seen anyone handle the ball like her. She can shoot the ball. She’ll come up big.”
Breaking a 33-year-old school record is something Mauz would love to accomplish, she said, but when asked about it, she said only one thing comes first — winning.
“It would feel really great (to break the record),” she said. “I’m going to try to get the win. I’m going to do everything I can to get us the win and score as much as I can. Getting the record is something I want to do, but getting a win first is bigger.”
WHAT’S NEXT: No. 9 Williamstown at No. 1 Lenape in the South Jersey Group 4 quarterfinals on Monday, time TBD. GCIT’s season is complete.
