Patterson Mill overcomes slow start to defeat Aberdeen

The Patterson Mill girls basketball team overcame a slow start Tuesday night but finished fast for an 52-47 UCBAC Chesapeake Division win at Aberdeen.

The win puts the Huskies atop the division standings.

The Huskies (11-0 overall, 5-0 in league play) fell behind by 10 in the opening quarter, but senior Chyna Latimer helped turn things around.

Latimer (24 points) scored eight straight in the first quarter and her seven additional points in the second quarter allowed the Huskies to close the gap to 26-25 at halftime.

"We know what we've been practicing and what we've been working on and we just wanted to come out here and show everyone what Patterson Mill has and just work hard, always push hard," Latimer said

It was Latimer's runner in the third quarter that pushed the Huskies ahead, 29-28, but Aberdeen (10-2, 4-1) matched Patterson Mill with 12 points in the quarter and led, 38-37, at the end of three.

Huskies senior Khayla Mitchell needed just six points to reach 1,000 for her career. She hit the touchstone early in the final quarter.

"In the beginning, my shot wasn't falling, so I had to drive, and finally things were working for me and I finally got 1,000 in the fourth quarter," Mitchell said.

Mitchell's memorable basket gave the Huskies a 41-38 lead, but Aberdeen's Jaelyne Deveaux (14 points) raced back down the floor and tied the game with her third three-point play of the game.

The Huskies, though, were too tough down the stretch, and pulled away over the final three minutes.

The Huskies took away the Eagles' transition game after the Eagles' big first quarter.

Before that, Aberdeen ran out to 8-4 lead, with Kayla Lighty hitting a pair of 3-pointers. Deveaux scored five straight points in the first quarter to push Aberdeen's lead to 13-4. Deveaux added a second three-point play in the quarter, and if Latimer hadn't scored her eight straight points in the quarter, the Huskies might faced a big deficit.

Patterson Mill was able to turn the game a bit in the second quarter, opening with a 10-2 run.

"Coming in, we knew that we had to take care of the basketball was the biggest thing," Huskies coach Holly Ismail said. "We knew they were gonna pressure, whether we made a shot or missed, so taking care of the basketball, valuing every possession was huge for us. And we had a lot of turnovers in that first quarter, and then I felt like our effort wasn't there. The biggest thing I said to them in between quarters was, 'We have got to have better effort,' and I would have been a lot louder than I was, but the gym was pretty quiet at the time."

The Huskies got 10 points from both Mitchell and Lucie Passwater, while Gabby Chenworth had eight points.

Lighty also scored 10 points for the Eagles. Tatiana Gibson added eight points.