Lauren Rose is showing five fingers, one for each victory in Coupeville’s current winning streak. (John Fisken photos)
Skyler Lawrence sparked the Wolves with 11 points and seven boards Friday.
ABC. Always be closing.
While it’s very possible none of the eight young women on the Coupeville High School JV girls’ basketball team have every heard of, much less seen, the 1992 salesmen-going-crazy film “Glengarry Glen Ross,” they lived out its credo Friday night.
Refusing to buckle after visiting Klahowya used a 12-2 fourth quarter run to snatch away the lead, the Wolves pulled off a flawless final minute to net their fifth straight win.
Closing on a 7-1 surge, with two buckets coming off of steals and another off of a ferocious offensive rebound, CHS snagged a frantic 40-35 win that would have left Wolf coach Amy King hoarse, if she wasn’t already losing her voice to a cold.
Now a shiny 11-5 overall, 6-0 in Olympic League play, Coupeville got the win by remaining composed, remaining focused and being stone-cold, bad-ass assassins.
When your nine-point lead slips away and the clock won’t run out fast enough to save you, most teams would crumble.
Not the Wolves.
A 31-22 lead turned into a 34-33 deficit in a mere heartbeat, the game seemingly slipping away.
Then Coupeville slammed the brakes on. Hard.
Kailey Kellner shredded two defenders to snag an offensive rebound, putting it back up and in to reclaim the lead, before steals by Lauren Rose and Tiffany Briscoe broke Klahowya’s back.
Rose fed Kyla Briscoe, who banged home a layup.
With Coupeville pressing the ball-handler, the Eagles panicked, allowing Tiffany Briscoe to go airborne on the next play, pick off a pass Richard Sherman-style, and find Kellner for the punctuation mark.
The final 60 seconds mirrored the way the first half had ended.
After struggling out of the gate — the JV played second Friday and it seemed to throw both teams off a bit in the opening minutes — Coupeville closed the half on a 10-3 run to take a 17-16 lead in at the half.
Lauren Grove banked home a jumper, then cut inside and took a pass from Skyler Lawrence for a quick layup, while Lawrence scored six during the run.
The final bucket was a marvel of passing, as the Wolves whipped the ball around the perimeter before Lawrence banked home a shot over two defenders that left her fingers a mere micro-second before the buzzer sounded.
With Kellner, the team’s leading scorer, slowed a bit by illness, Lawrence stepped up to fill the gap, dropping in a team-high 11 points.
She got plenty of support, as Kyla Briscoe (8), Grove (6), Tiffany Briscoe (5), Kellner (5, all in the game’s final minute), Rose (4) and Allison Wenzel (1) all chipped in.
Brisa Herrera was the lone Wolf to not make the scoring column, but the freshman was a feisty fighter in the rebounding pit.
While she saved her scoring for crunch time, Kellner did snag 10 boards and make off with three steals. Grove and Lawrence each hauled in seven boards.
Coupeville Sports 