Turner senior Mariya Babilius on verge of new three-point shooting record

BELOIT — Mariya Babilius says her journey to where she is today as a Beloit Turner senior basketball player wasn’t always rainbows and unicorns.

Her first two seasons of high school basketball, in particular, had some errant shots, some missed opportunities and some moping on the sideline.

“The summer after my sophomore year I think I showed them who I really was,” she said. “I developed as a person and realized you can’t just sit around and get everything handed to you. You have to earn it all. That’s what I did. I tried to take every opportunity I could and make something of it.”

“Mariya has matured a lot and become the kid who is leading us in scoring and has the respect of the entire team,” Turner head coach Nick Faralli said. “She’s become a leader and someone everyone cares about. We expected her role to increase this season, but we didn’t know she was going to be breaking records for her three-point shooting. We’re pretty excited about that.”

The 5-foot-7 guard is averaging 12.5 points per game and with 57 three-pointers on the season is just one shy of breaking the school single-season record she currently holds with Jenn Njoo.

With eight treys against Delavan-Darien on Feb. 3, she already owns the school single-game record. The Comets had the misfortune of electing to start that game in a zone defense and she quickly shot them out of it with a career-high 26 points.

Babilius has helped a young Trojans team go 17-4 this season, including 10-2 in the Rock Valley Conference’s Rock Division. They’re in second place behind 12-0 Edgerton and coming off a 50-48 double overtime win at Evansville on Tuesday.

“That was a hard game getting into the flow, but you could tell at the end everyone wanted to finish off that win,” she said.

Prevailing in games like that shows the confidence of the young team.

“I felt good coming into the season because I knew how hard everyone had worked in the off-season,” Babilius said. “Everyone has a good attitude and is coachable and we come to work every day ready to put in the time and effort to improve. I really thought going in that we have a chance to make it to state.”

The Trojans’ calling card is their tenacious defense. In that regard, Babilius has come a long way since early in her career.

“Mariya has really bought into playing defense,” Faralli said. “She has done a real good job this season for a team that’s built on getting stops. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of her for, buying into playing hard on both ends of the floor.”

“Last year was still a struggle for me on defense, but I worked all summer to get better,” she said. “I think with my experience I’ve tried to help my teammates know what they have to do and what angles we have to cut off to play better defense. When we play really good defense our steals and our stops turn into transition offense.”

When they’ve had to play a set offense, and when they’re not scoring inside with 5-foot-11 Jayla Hodges and Kaylee Kramer, they can count on Babilius willing to hit from deep when necessary. She is shooting 37.7 percent on her three-pointers (57-151) and leads the team with 263 points. She’s also converting 71.4 percent at the line.

“The best shooters want to shoot either to get hot or stay hot,” Faralli said. “And when she’s hot, we try to run actions to get her as many shots as possible.”

Babilius said her accuracy doesn’t come by accident.

“I work every day on it,” she said. “There isn’t a day that I’m not working on basketball. I love the sport. If you know me, it’s probably because of basketball.”

Like with every good outside shooter, there will be an occasional dry spell when nothing seems to fall. But Babilius said a short memory is a must.

“When I’m not feeling it, I think it’s just mental,” she said. “If you know you’re a shooter, you have to forget that last shot you missed and it’s all about the next one and you’re going to hit that one. You can’t sit around and mope about the one you missed because you’ve got another opportunity coming up.”

Babilius hopes there’s basketball for her post-high school, but has no firm plans.

“I don’t want to make any hard choices now,” she said. “We have a lot of basketball left to play.”