Hercules! Hercules! Kacie Kiel’s shot went up and stayed up. (Amy King photo)
There are losses that shred a coach’s soul, and than there are losses that almost seem like a win.
Tuesday night, the Coupeville High School girls’ basketball team put together one of the latter, allowing coach David King to walk away 99% pleased with what he witnessed.
While he still would have preferred to flip the score on a 50-48 loss at Archbishop Thomas Murphy, his team’s defensive intensity and unwillingness to back down from a top-level 2A squad led by one of the Cascade Conference’s best players satisfied him.
“We wanted to put a complete game together, that meant all facets of the game,” King said. “To do this we had to move the ball on offense, hit our shots, rebound well, minimize our turnovers, play under control and play defense.
“This was one of our best games along with getting contributions from everyone,” he added. “A total team effort.”
With the Wonder Twins — Wolf defensive dynamos Kacie Kiel and Julia Myers — forcing ATM’s Megan Wall to work hard for every one of her 15 points, Coupeville stayed with the Wildcats down to the final moments.
Refusing to let Wall beat them, CHS forced her to pass the ball off in the final seconds, only to be stung by Haley Sizelove, who drained a three to give ATM a 49-48 lead.
After turnovers by both teams and a Wall free-throw, Coupeville got a strong look at a game-tying basket, but Makana Stone’s shot at the buzzer refused to stay in the basket.
Now 8-10 as they head into Senior Night Friday against Granite Falls (1-17), the Wolves will wrap the regular season Saturday at King’s (15-3), before hosting a 1A district playoff game Tuesday, Feb. 11.
If his team plays the way it did Tuesday, King expects the Wolves to be a force to be reckoned with in the double-elimination district tourney, the first step on a possible path to the state tournament.
“They are working hard at this daily and last night we saw improvement,” King said. “If we bring the effort and energy we played with last night, we will represent well.”
And, while the Wolves have several players who can put up big numbers on the score board — Stone threw down 19 Tuesday — a team-wide commitment to rabid defense is the key.
“I can’t say enough about our defensive effort,” King said. “Kacie and Julia really held their scorer in check.
“But from top to bottom each and everyone else stepped up and did their part by playing help defense and getting out on their shooters.”
After holding Wall to just a bucket in the opening quarter, Coupeville held a 15-12 lead at the first break. At one point, the silky-smooth Stone rained down seven consecutive points.
The game was back-and-forth from that moment on, with neither team able to pull away. A huge part of that was Wall’s inability to take control of the game, as she often does.
“Kacie played lights-out defense on Megan and took two charges in the low block on her,” King said. “After the game I talked to Kacie about her defensive effort and she told me that her goal was to get in Megan’s head.
“Between Kacie and Julia, they stuck with her throughout the game,” he added. “She started throwing up some rushed shots and at one point in the fourth appeared to be frustrated. There wasn’t any letting up by Kacie or Julia.”
Stone corralled 14 rebounds and rejected four ATM shots to go with her game-high 19 points, while senior captains Amanda Fabrizi (10 points, including a huge three-pointer, and two steals) and Breeanna Messner (nine points, six rebounds, four steals, three assists) backed her up superbly.
Kiel knocked in eight points and snared seven boards, while Madeline Strasburg dropped in a bucket and made off with three boards and four assists.
Myers chipped in with three assists, a block and 32 stare-downs of ATM players stupid enough to try and score on her.
