Macon — It would have been unfair to expect it, but Anne Marie Armstrong was not close to matching her 40-point output in the Class AA semifinals.

It hardly mattered.

Jason Getz/Staff (ENLARGE)

The Wesleyan bench cheers behind coach Jan Azar in the first half, during which the Lady Wolves jumped to a 47-17 advantage.

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With Armstrong facing multiple defenders most of the day, her teammates had their own way with Paideia in the finals Saturday, and Wesleyan (30-3) romped to a 79-40 win for its fourth state championship in five years.

Armstrong, who exploded for 40 points in the semifinal win over Savannah Christian, scored 13 points Saturday, but it was the perimeter shooting of Erin Hall (22 points) and Aysia McKenzie (16) that buried Paideia.

"Anne Marie's a great player," Wesleyan coach Jan Azar said, "and she makes the players around her better."

Hall was exhibit A on that point, making 8 of 12 shots from the floor (6 of 7 from 3-point range), and as a team the Lady Wolves made 11 3-pointers.

"We have good team chemistry," Hall said, "and we have a lot of people who can score. They were in a triangle-and-two defense, and Anne Marie was able to get it out to us. We made the shots."

And then there was the defense.

After giving up 65 points in the semifinal round against Savannah Christian, the Lady Wolves were relentless on the defensive end, making 16 steals as a team and rendering their scoring output an embarrassment of riches.

"I wasn't very happy with our defense Thursday," Azar said. "We press a lot. All of these girls have been doing it since the fifth grade, and we just worked on our rotations. It was much better today. This was the best we've played all year. We played like it was the state championship game."

The Pythons (25-8) got 17 points from Aneesah Daniels, but as a team didn't reach double figures in scoring until the 3:06 mark of the second period, and by that point they trailed by 26 points.

So complete was Wesleyan's domination that the fourth quarter was trimmed to six minutes under the mercy rule after it closed the third period with a 62-28 cushion.

The Lady Wolves, who lost in the Region 6-AA final to Greater Atlanta Christian, averaged winning by 26.2 points in their five state tournament games. With only one senior, Carter Johnson (who scored four points Saturday), they'll be the odds-on favorites in 2009.