Young’s Class 4A regional championship victory Friday featured a lot of good, plenty of bad and an awful lot of ugly.
The good: Young sophomore Jahlil Okafor had 26 points and 10 rebounds in a 64-56 home victory against St. Rita. The bad: Young had 21 turnovers. The ugly: St. Rita shot 8-for-25 from the free-throw line.
“We’ve been injured all season and finally got guys like Paul White, Jermaine Morgan and Thomas Hamilton back,” Okafor said. “Everybody gave 100-percent effort. And all the pieces are back. Even though we played bad, we still won.”
Young (16-9) scored in spurts, only to find St. Rita battling back. Young’s 10-3 run to open the game was answered by a 12-5 run to close the quarter and tie the score at 17-all. An 8-2 Young run in the third put the Dolphins ahead 46-41. But St. Rita closed the quarter on a 5-2 run and trailed 48-46 heading into the fourth.
The Mustangs (16-11) were within four with 3 minutes, 2 seconds remaining when Okafor converted back-to-back baseline lay-ins off of the press break to key a late 8-0 Dolphins run and push the lead to 63-51. St. Rita made a 5-0 run in the closing minute, but could not overcome the mistakes at the free-throw line.
“Our guys put themselves in position to win tonight, but the bottom line is we missed free throws, and that’s a big part of the game,” St. Rita coach Gary DeCesare said. “All I asked guys to do is when they come upstairs after the game is ask themselves if they gave 120 percent. And they did.”
Player the game:
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Jahlil Okafor, Young, 26 points, 10 rebounds.
Key performers:
Young — Gabriel Snider, 10 points. St. Rita — Tony Hicks, 19 points; Dominique Matthews, 15 points.