Unalaska, AK – The Unalaska Raiders boys' and girls' varsity basketball teams both started off the season with solid wins. The girls' team played two away games at Sand Point on Thursday and Friday. During their first game, they beat the home team 72 to 30. They scored 20 points more than their strongest game last year. Coming off their first win of the season, they kept playing strong on Friday and beat the Sand Point Eagles again, this time 73 to 22. It's an encouraging departure from last year's season, wherein the team lost all of their games.

Their coach, Alan Haskins, said they have a major new factor in their favor. "I think their confidence level is much better than it was last year. And I think a lot of that has to do with just the practices and what we've been focused on in practice. Trying to get them to realize to just play basketball and not doing specific things. And I think that's really helped."

Their shooting is also stronger this year and having Meta Mendenhall back on the team helps because she's a large inside presence. Haskins said the team will have to work on facing the pressure of a full court press and the teams they will face will get progressively harder as they prepare for the regional tournament. Sand Point posed less of a challenge than other teams, like King Cove or Kotzebue.

The Sand Point team is "young," Haskins explained. "They're inexperienced. You know, they had a couple of really good shooters. Once we figured out who they were and what they could do we tightened up our defense on them and it made it much more difficult for them to shoot the way they wanted to. But that was just an adjustment that they made, and they didn't make any adjustments." 

The girls will face King Cove and Sand Point at home this Thursday and Friday. They will be the only Lady Raider home games of the season.

The boys played their only home games this past weekend. The boys' varsity team won all three of their games by wide margins - 50 to 35 and 62 to 36 against the King Cove T-Jacks, 79 to 32 against the Sand Point Eagles.

The boys' JV and C squad teams didn't fare as well against their varsity opponents. They lost all five of their games. These were the only home games for the boys' team this season, however you can listen to most of the away games live on KUCB.