Tyra Buss is a star athlete, plain and simple. The Mt. Carmel (Ill.) High junior stars in four different high school sports, competing in track and field, tennis, cross country and basketball. Still, it's basketball where Buss has turned the most heads, earning scholarship offers from a host of schools before eventually committing to Indiana in November.
Her recent performance against Marshall (Ill.) High can serve as a case in point for her hoops talent: As reported by the Terre Haute Tribune Star, the junior scored an astounding 51 points to lead Mt. Carmel to a narrow 60-56 victory.
Even more incredibly, the 51-point outburst might not have been Buss' most efficient offensive game of the day; she scored 40 points in a tournament semifinal victory in only three quarters of action.
Forget for a moment that many entire girls basketball teams fail to score 51 points in a game all season. What's more impressive is that Buss scored those 51 points in such a tight game against a highly regarded foe.
Clearly, Mt. Carmel needed every last bucket, too, with the Aces scratching out a victory and an early season tournament title in the process.
According to the Tribune Star's internal statistics, Buss hit 14 of the 17 shots she took in the game and also connected on 17 free throws. Those totals would indicate that Buss connected on six different threes to help pad her statistical totals and her team's narrow edge.
Of course, as one might expect, this isn't Buss' first big scoring game. MaxPreps reported that Buss has averaged more than 30 points per game across the course of her two-plus-year career. Evidently those totals may still have room to go up, as Buss has wasted no time in proving so far in the 2012-13 campaign.
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