Whitney Young hands Huntley first loss

The Huntley girls basketball team got a good lesson Friday night as Whitney Young’s tenacious defense held the Red Raiders to 3 points in the first quarter. The Dolphins went on to win 71-41 in the ChiTown Showdown in Chicago, handing Huntley its first loss of the season after 10 wins. It was a rematch of last year’s Class 4A third-place state game, which Young also won.

“It was not a very good first quarter,” said Red Raiders’ coach Steve Raethz. “We just didn’t come ready to play from the start. It was a really poorly played half on our part on both ends of the floor. I was just disappointed that we didn’t come out and compete in the first half.”

The Red Raiders (10-1) dug themselves a hole scoring only 9 points in the second quarter while the Dolphins piled on 27 in the first quarter and added 13 more in the second to take a 40-12 lead at the half.

“When you are playing an elite team like Whitney Young, you can’t come out flat the way that we did and expect to stay in the game,” said Raethz. “They got on us early. We let them have way too many points in that first quarter.”

Ali Andrews was Huntley’s only scoring threat in the first half with 8 points. She finished with 16. Her sister, Sam, found the range for the Red Raiders with all of her 12 points in the second half.

“We haven’t been playing well to start the game so that was one of the things I was stressing, making sure we came out strong and started the game strong,” said Dolphins’ coach Corry Irvin, an Elgin native and a Larkin alum. “I think that surprised them a little bit. We really wanted to take the Andrews sisters out of what they were trying to do early in the game to make them work a little harder than what they were used to.”

The Dolphins (5-0) had 7 steals and high-post Khaalia Hillman dominated the boards with 11 rebounds.

“We just didn’t do a very good job of taking care of the ball tonight,” said Raethz. “We’ll learn from our mistakes and we’ll get better from it.”

Trying to stop Hillman, who had 10 points, allowed more space for Madinah Muhammad to score a game-high 19 points and Kiara Lewis to score 15 points for Young.

“I thought in general our kids played harder and competed in the second half on both ends,” said Raethz. “I was pleased to be able to walk away knowing that we did a better job with that.”