Julia Myers gets two the hard way. (John Fisken photos)
Just a freshman, Mia Littlejohn (right) holds up well under the pressure.
Playoff basketball arrived on Dec. 6 this season.
It was only the third game of the year, and a non-conference one at that, but Saturday’s showdown between the Coupeville High School girls’ basketball squad and visiting Bellevue Christian had a postseason feel.
Big plays, tension-packed final moments, odd calls, frequent lead changes, a star player avoiding a catastrophic injury by an inch or two — it had it all.
What it didn’t have for the Wolves was a win, as a buzzer-beater shot that might have forced overtime dropped in, but for two and not the three needed, allowing the Vikings to escape with a hard-fought 52-51 win.
The loss dropped Coupeville to 2-1, heading into a Monday home game against Mount Baker (5:15 JV/7:00 varsity), the team that actually did knock the Wolves out of the 1A playoffs last season.
Things ended on a dramatic note (or seven or eight) Saturday as the two teams combined for 32 fourth-quarter points, two big lead changes and a tension-packed final 58 seconds.
Down by five, Coupeville stormed back to take the lead at 43-42 with three straight baskets (Makana Stone banked one off the backboard, then stole the ball on the next play, feeding Kacie Kiel on a breakaway, before Mia Littlejohn capped things by dropping a perfect pass off to a waiting Julia Myers).
Bellevue Christian refused to break, however, immediately going on its own 8-2 run to reclaim the lead.
Enter Kiel again, swishing a gorgeous jumper from the left side to keep things interesting.
After Wynter Thorne and Kiel teamed up to force a turnover in the back court, Hailey Hammer scored on an in-bounds play to cut the lead back to one.
Coupeville’s defense again clamped down, but its offense misfired on consecutive tries.
Hope lingered, however, as the Vikings, who had been virtually flawless from the line all afternoon, suddenly got gun-shy at the charity stripe.
Missing half of their four tries in the final 11 seconds, they gave CHS back the ball while clinging to just a three-point lead.
Needing to go the length of the court in 5.9 seconds, Littlejohn took the pass and hurtled down the left side, looking for Stone or Kiel.
She found Kiel, who caught the ball, turned and immediately fired and watched it drop through with a gentle swish.
It was only as everyone realized Kiel had inadvertently drifted a step or two inside the three-point line that the Bellevue Christian celebration exploded.
While the game didn’t end with a win, or at least a chance at overtime, it shouldn’t overshadow the way the Wolves played. At times, they looked like a well-oiled machine, and it was only a couple of brief stumbles that denied them.
Some of that might have been the short turn-around time, as Coupeville tipped off about 15 hours after beating Darrington the night before.
Though, in the early going, there was no sleepiness or tired legs.
The Wolves bolted out to a 12-2 lead with Stone throwing down six and dealing to Thorne on the wing for a breakaway layup.
Bellevue fought back, mixing deadly outside shooting with a patient defense and claimed its first lead at 17-16 midway through the second quarter.
Coupeville used a 5-0 mini-spurt to reopen a 25-21 lead, only to see the Vikings nail a last-second three-pointer from the top to put their halftime deficit at just one.
The second half started in favor of the Wolves, with Hammer hitting on a pair of inside buckets, then sharply turned for a bit.
Bellevue went on a 13-2 tear, grabbing its biggest lead at six, before Monica Vidoni stepped forward with a five-point burst of her own to tighten things back up.
The game’s biggest scare came when Stone, chasing a loose ball, skidded out of bounds, smashing her back badly against an exposed power box on the back wall.
Other than being in a lot of pain at the moment, and possibly having an imprint of power plug-ins on her back, she came away unscathed, allowing the collective bated breath of Wolf Nation to be released as one.
After sitting out for part of the third, she returned to spark the Wolves in the fourth, setting up what become the wildest finish of the still-young season.
Stone finished with a team-high 14, while Kiel dropped in 10.
Vidoni banged home nine, Hammer hit for six, Myers collected five, McKenzie Bailey swished a pair of sweet jumpers for four and Thorne netted three.
Coupeville Sports 