7th grade varsity players listen to coach Sarah Stuurmans during a time-out. (Justine McGranahan photos)
So close.
Katrina McGranahan prepares to defend her paint.
Jae LeVine (left) and Carlie Rosenkrance celebrate their three-point bombs. (Amy Briscoe photo)
The day started with a bang, sputtered a bit in the middle, then ended on a triumphant high note.
If nothing else, if you put in the whole three-and-a-half-hours Monday as the Coupeville Middle School girls’ basketball squads faced off with visiting King’s, you got your money’s worth. Even if you didn’t have to pay for a ticket in the first place.
The biggest opponent any team faces when the bus from King’s rolls in is the overwhelming thought, “Oh my sweet lord, it’s KING’S!!”
The Wolf 7th grade JV team quickly got over that trepidation, with Ashley Smith and Kameryn St Onge stealing the ball the first two times down the court. Back-to-back buckets off of rebounds by Jessica Bester and St Onge staked Coupeville to an early lead and they never let up on defense, rolling to a 13-6 win in the opener.
St Onge poured in five points and Brittany SassPowers popped for four, while Emma Blanchette capped a game-clinching 6-0 run with a brilliant breakaway bucket, much to the delight of her dad enthusiastically screaming in my ear.
After a less-inspiring 8th grade JV game (a 10-1 loss with Jasmine Melena’s free-throw the lone Wolf point), things got wild in the varsity games.
With Mia Littlejohn running wild, tossing in buckets and threading passes to open teammates for easy buckets, the 7th grade varsity looked unstoppable … for a half. Up 19-9 at the break, all the talk in the stands was of Littlejohn bobbing and weaving her way to nine points, while doling out award-worthy assists to Sage Renninger and Mckenzie Meyer.
Then King’s brought out a full-court press and things fell apart a bit.
Unable to consistently get the ball in to Littlejohn, who was jostled, shoved, bumped and smacked, Coupeville had a run of turnovers that resulted in easy buckets for the Knights.
Katrina McGranahan stemmed the bleeding for a moment, snatching a rebound and putting it right back up for two. Never actually losing the lead, the Wolves clung to a 23-22 lead after three, but then the wheels fell completely off in the fourth.
The final score of 38-29 sounds worse than it was, as a late 10-4 run, with King’s still pressing, expanded the lead in the final minutes.
Littlejohn poured in 15 to pace the Wolves, while McGranahan, Renninger and Meyer each banked in four. Lauren Rose rounded out the scoring with a bucket off of a broken play.
The final game of the afternoon went South quickly, as King’s rolled to a 21-8 lead on its way to a fairly easy 37-21 win in the 8th grade varsity game.
What the game was notable for was the rough-and-ready play of Wolves Mattea Miller and Lauren Grove, who lived up to the gold standard set by defensive dynamo Valen Trujillo.
Miller fought like a beast in the paint, while Grove dove to the floor in pursuit of loose balls several times, sliding under her foes and flipping Knight players skyward three separate times.
With a very-deep King’s squad rotating in five girls at a time (a fact not appreciated by CMS star Luke Merriman, on hand to watch his female hoops counterparts), Coupeville pulled off a pair of picture-perfect three-point bombs to end the day.
The first came from team spark-plug Jae LeVine, who waved her arms in the air Rocky-style after her shot.
The second one was a beautifully-executed buzzer beater from Carlie Rosenkrance, who brought the ball up under pressure and drilled her shot a micro-second before the final buzzer blared.
Miller, Rosenkrance and Skyler Lawrence dropped in six apiece to pace the Wolves, while the irrepressible LeVine is likely still dancing over her three.
