By Chuck Reherman
Sports Editor
The start to the 2020 portion of the season has not been a kind one for Yukon’s Millerettes.
Already down a starter, the Millerettes lost a second less than a minute into the second half and things went downhill from there as Moore rolled to a 68-41 Central Olahoma Athletic Conference win Tuesday night at Yukon.
The Millerettes went into the contest without junior M.J. Case, who broke her ankle during a workout. And 42 seconds into the second half, Kristen Readel collided with Moore’s Aliyah Moore. She left the court on a stretcher with an apparent back injury.
YHS trailed Moore 41-19 when Readel was injured and never got back into the game.
“We are hoping it was all precautionary, that is what we are hoping and praying,” Millerette head coach Roy Wyckoff said after the game. “It puts things in perspective, basketball is just a game and we are trying to focus. The girls all wanted to go be Kristen after the game and we will talk about basketball later.
“I was really proud of the fact that the girls were still focused on playing,” he said. “I asked them if they still wanted to play and no one would think anything of it if we called the game right then and that it was up to them. They said they didn’t think Kristen would want them to call the game and they wanted to play for Kristen.
“That is what they did and they played really hard. That was a super hard second half to play with what they are going through. But, these girls are tough and resilient, they have dealt with a lot of stuff. They show up everyday and work and give everything for each other. I am proud to be their coach.”
The Millerettes trailed 43-19 when Readel was injured after Moore had scored just seconds into the third quarter. YHS did try to fight back as Jaylee Watson came up with a pair of steals and scores cut into the Moore lead.
Moore, though, with the more decided height advantage pushed the lead back over 20 and used a pair of field goals from Raychel Harjo and a trey from Peyton Andrews to open a 30-point, 59-29 lead.
Yukon did score the first eight points of the fourth quarter to make it a 59-37 in the first two minutes.
“Moore is a really good team, they have several really good players and are really tough,” Wyckoff said. “They have a lot of size, but our girls stayed in and finished the game. I couldn’t have been prouder of how they finished the game.”
The Millerettes gave the No. 7 ranked Lady Lions a tough go to start. YHS trailed by four, 16-12 late in the first, but Moore used a 13-0 run to start the second and take control of the game.
“We played a good first quarter and in the second, Moore just kicked us,” Wyckoff said. “We didn’t get any ball movement, were stagnant, were standing and watching. Our offense is predicated on ball movement and spacing.
“If you watched that, you saw that’s not what it looked like and it hurt us defensively,” he said. “They flexed their muscles on us. We will talk about it more and work on correcting things like that.”
A’munique Holmes led Yukon with 13 points, Sydney Brown added 12 and Watson had nine.
