The Gatlinburg-Pittman Highlanders matched up with the Summertown Eagles in a TSSAA Class 2A state tournament quarterfinal at the Charles M. Murphy Athletic Center on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. (Photo by Danny Parker)
BY JESSE SMITHEY
MURFREESBORO — It’s no secret around Gatlinburg that Maliyah Glasper loves a good 3-point shot.
After all, she made 11 in a game in mid-December, and she had made more than 90 of them this season entering this week’s Class 2A state tournament.
Her stroke travels, too — even inside of college arenas.
Glasper went 5-for-8 from deep Wednesday night and scored a game-high 25 points in Gatlinburg-Pittman’s 50-36 win over Summertown in the 2A quarterfinals at MTSU’s Murphy Center.
She also had nine rebounds and four steals. Not a bad night’s worth of production for just 25 minutes of play for the 5-foot-7 junior guard.
“It was tough. She’s a tough person to guard,” Summertown coach Jeremy Jean said. “Man to man, I don’t think we could guard her. We lost her in zone a couple times.
“If she’s making that 3, she’s not guardable.”
Gatlinburg-Pittman (26-11) reaches the state semifinals for the second consecutive season and will play either Memphis Business or York Institute in a 2:15 p.m. Central time semifinal on Friday.
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Glasper played a fantastic opening half against Summertown (25-6), scoring 15 points with three rebounds and three steals in 12 minutes on the floor.
She went 3 of 5 from the 3-point line and helped G-P force nine first-half turnovers.
Her 3 with 2:40 remaining in the second quarter gave the Lady Highlanders a 24-21 lead.
Chloe Mejias sank a 10-footer in the lane as time expired for a 26-24 halftime advantage for G-P.
Glasper kept it going into the third. She scored seven points in the final 2:38 of the quarter to help construct a 38-31 lead with 8 minutes to go.
“She’s one of the girls you can always find in the gym, even to the point where I have to say, ‘You need to take a day off and rest just a little bit,” G-P coach Katie Moore said of Glasper. “But, yes, the time she puts in is unbelievable.”
Addi Wear’s corner 3 bumped the G-P buffer up to 10 in the first minute of the fourth.
Glasper added a corner 3 with 4:30 left to make it 44-33 G-P.
Summertown committed 18 turnovers, shot 33.3 percent from the floor and got just two steals on defense against G-P. Not the recipe for a comeback.
As for G-P, getting back to the semifinals likely silenced some doubters that intimated the program might struggle in 2024-25 following the graduation of 2024 Miss Basketball finalist Maddy Newman (Tennessee Tech) and transfer of Division I prospect Nya Burns (Grace Christian).
“Just to know that these girls have the grit and the want to get down here when people were doubting us because of people we lost to graduation and other things from last year’s season,” Moore said.
“I just think it’s that much more exciting that were down here and able to do this.”
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