Mia Littlejohn (left) and Tiffany Briscoe are league champs, again. (John Fisken photo)
Our league, yesterday, today, tomorrow.
There ain’t ever been a dynasty in the 1A Olympic League like the one being crafted by the Coupeville High School girls varsity basketball program.
Playing at home for the first time in 45 days Tuesday, the Wolves jumped out to a 13-2 lead after one quarter than strolled home with a 41-26 victory over visiting Klahowya.
The win, Coupeville’s 24th without a loss in the three-year history of the conference, clinches a third-straight league title for the Wolves.
Now sitting at 6-0 in league, 11-3 overall, CHS is on a seven-game winning streak and hasn’t tasted defeat since Dec. 16.
Coupeville, which has five regular season games left, will open the playoffs Feb. 14 against a yet-to-be-decided foe at Bellarmine Prep High School.
With the league title, the Wolves have automatically qualified for the double-elimination portion of districts and will need to win twice to punch their ticket to state for a second straight year.
To see the playoff bracket, pop over to: http://www.olympicleague.com/tournament.php?tournament_id=2187&sport=12
CHS girls’ hoops joins Klahowya girls’ soccer as the only 1A Olympic League programs to have won three straight league titles, but the Wolves 24-0 mark betters the Eagles booters, who are 20-0 in league play all-time.
To get there, Coupeville hit the court aggressively Tuesday night.
After playing an unprecedented eight straight on the road (and going 7-1 against a mix of league and non-league foes), the Wolves might not have recognized their own gym, but they adapted quickly.
Kailey Kellner kicked the game off with a long three-ball from the left side, then, after a Klahowya bucket sliced the lead to one, it was all Wolves, all the time.
Six different players scored to stake Coupeville to a 13-2 lead after one quarter, with Kellner capping things with a running layup off of a nifty steal and set-up pass from Kalia Littlejohn.
The Wolves continued that trend, of teammates setting each other up, throughout the game.
Whether it was Lindsey Roberts snatching a rebound and dishing to Mia Littlejohn for a put-back, or Littlejohn returning the favor by leading a breakaway, then dropping the ball into Roberts waiting fingers at the very last second, CHS was a well-oiled unit for much of the game.
Wolf guards Lauren Grove and Mia Littlejohn were on top of their passing game, threading balls between bodies or sucking in defenders, then flipping the ball to waiting teammates like Allison Wenzel for easy buckets.
Coupeville stretched the lead out to 31-14 midway through the third quarter, before hitting its only true dry spell.
Three straight Klahowya buckets, two coming off of in-bounds passes, put a little starch in CHS coach David King’s collar, and the loss of defensive scrapper Kyla Briscoe (she emerged from a tussle with a broken nose) slowed the Wolf strut for a moment.
But just a moment, as Coupeville came out firing in the fourth, scoring the quarter’s first 10 points to put an exclamation point on things.
Kellner knocked down a runner off a pass from Grove, then stepped outside, way outside, to drain a pretty three-ball, before Mia Littlejohn twinned her, but in reverse order.
Her trey, which was launched from somewhere up around Deception Pass, came first, before Littlejohn dropped in a jumper off of a little stutter-step drive to cap things.
“Mia played one of her better games all year,” King said.
He also praised Wenzel (“Allison gave us some really good defense”), Roberts (“she has provided us with a strong rebounding presence out there all year”) and Coupeville’s ability to control the boards against the Eagles.
Roberts (11), Kellner (7) and Tiffany Briscoe (3) led the carom collection troops, as the Wolves repeatedly got second chances in the paint off of offensive boards.
Coupeville put eight of its 12 players in the scoring column, led by Kellner, who rained down a game-high 18, scoring in every quarter.
Mia Littlejohn (7), Roberts (6), Mikayla Elfrank (3), Wenzel (2), Tiffany Briscoe (2), Grove (2) and Kalia Littlejohn (1) rounded out the well-balanced attack.
Lauren Rose was a spark-plug on both sides of the ball, Kyla Briscoe was a ball-hawk (even while getting blasted across the face by a wayward elbow) and swing players Ema Smith and Sarah Wright brought hustle to the floor in the late-going.
After playing so much of their season on the road, the Wolves close with five of their final six on their home court.
They have two more games this week, with Chimacum (3:30 JV/5:00 varsity) in town Friday and Klahowya (12:30 varsity/2:00 JV) returning to Whidbey Saturday.
