Avalon Renninger hit one bucket Friday, and it was huge. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Just win, baby.
It was the mantra of the Oakland Raiders during their Super Bowl-winning heyday, and it fits for the current Coupeville High School varsity girls basketball squad as well.
The Wolves have been a work in progress this season, but a successful one.
They’ve endured some shooting woes, from the field and the line, but hard work on the boards, a feisty mentality on defense, and some clutch shooting when it matters most, has kept CHS alive and thriving.
Case in point, Friday night, as the Wolves overcame an epic cold spell and found a way to turn on the heat in crunch time, using a fourth-quarter run to crack visiting Granite Falls.
Closing the game on a 14-2 run, with four different players scoring, Coupeville pulled out a come-from-behind 41-32 win and set themselves up nicely for the playoffs.
With the win, the Wolves improve to 5-3 in North Sound Conference play and clinch the league’s #3 postseason seed behind King’s and Cedar Park Christian.
Now 11-5 overall, Coupeville closes the regular season Tuesday at home, with Senior Night on tap, and South Whidbey (3-5, 9-10) the opponent.
The double-elimination district playoffs kick off Feb. 10, and Coupeville will be on the road at the home of the #2 Northwest Conference team.
That should be Nooksack Valley (13-4), a team the Wolves lost to 52-30 right before winter break.
A win sends CHS on to play NSC league champ King’s, while a loss pits them against either the #5 NSC team (Sultan) or the #4 NWC squad (Meridian or Mount Baker).
Either way the second game is Feb. 11.
Win their opener, and the Wolves travel to Shoreline. Lose, and they host game two.
Friday night’s fracas, which pitted the Wolves against a cellar-dweller team, was always going to be tough, regardless of records.
Granite Falls hasn’t won many games this season, but the Tigers are a physical, scrappy squad which doesn’t go down easily.
Coupeville got a taste of that a week-and-a-half back, when it escaped Granite with a one-point win, and Friday’s game, after a great start, quickly went the same way.
In the early going, CHS coach Scott Fox might have been feeling pretty good, as the Wolves roared out to a 14-6 lead before the first quarter was done.
Hannah Davidson drilled the bottom out of the net on a lil’ jumper from the side to kick off the scoring, then almost all of her teammates jumped on the scoring train.
Scout Smith, Maddie Georges, Izzy Wells, and Chelsea Prescott all scored during the opening surge, with Georges pulling off a three-point play the hard way on a full-court drive, layup in traffic, and free throw.
Prescott swished back-to-back jumpers from the side, with the second coming off a very long rebound which found its way right into her hands, and things looked peachy.
And then they didn’t.
Covering a period which stretched from the final minute or so of the first quarter until halfway through the third quarter, Coupeville found new and creative ways to NOT make buckets.
The Wolves had good look after even better look, often thanks to aggressive work on defense, but the rim just wasn’t having it.
Shots popped up, rolled sideways, dribbled out, swirled around and died, and flat out refused to stay down.
CHS could only get two shots to drop through the net in the second quarter — a long jumper from Georges and a slashing layup from Smith off a run up the middle — and the Wolves were in trouble.
But not as much as they could have been.
The aforementioned aggressive defense, keyed by Smith slapping 1,001 balls out of the hands of Tiger guards, kept the Wolves close.
Also helping out was strong work on the glass from Davidson, Izzy Wells, and freshman brawler Carolyn Lhamon, and Coupeville went in to the locker room at the half trailing just 20-18.
Neither team could score for the first half of the third quarter, but for different reasons.
The Wolves still couldn’t get the rim to play nice, while Granite flat out couldn’t get a shot off, as Smith, backed by Avalon Renninger and Tia Wurzrainer, drove their ballhandlers batty.
The dry spell finally, mercifully ended some four minutes into the third frame, when Renninger, rolling to her left, lofted up a ball and banked it off the glass, earning a deep sigh of relief from her coach.
That seemed to bust things open, a bit at least.
Wells rolled under her defender for a bucket in the paint, Georges dropped a three-ball from the top of the arc, and Wurzrainer absolutely drilled a pull-up jumper once things started rolling.
But Granite wouldn’t break, converting a breakaway bucket to end the third, then slapping home another layup to open the final frame.
Up 30-27, the Tigers could see the victory.
Then again, they might want to check their vision.
Backs to the wall, the Wolves came through one more time, just as they have done again and again this season, pulling yet another victory out of the jaws of defeat.
Free throws knotted the game at 30-30, before Smith delivered the sucker punch, nailing a jumper just inside the three-point line after Prescott punched a ball free, then chased it down and fed her running mate.
Add another three-ball from Georges, a freshman who shoots like a senior, and a couple of sweet jumpers from wily veterans Prescott and Davidson, and the damage was done.
The furious finale capped a game in which seven Wolves tallied points.
Georges led the way with 11, while Smith (9), Davidson (7), Prescott (6), Wells (4), Renninger (2), and Wurzrainer (2) also filled up the scorebook.
Lhamon, Audrianna Shaw, and Kylie Van Velkinburgh also saw floor time for the Wolves.
The game marked a personal milestone for Davidson, as she became the 100th CHS girl to score 100 points during their prep career.
Her game-opening bucket was the big one, and with 105 points by night’s end, she now sits at #97 all-time for a modern-day Wolf program which began play in 1974.
