Scout Smith scored 12 points Saturday to pace Coupeville’s varsity in a brawl with Nooksack Valley. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Survive playing against the best, and you will likely prosper.
Saturday afternoon wasn’t exactly fun for the Coupeville High School varsity girls basketball squad, but it should help prepare them for the road ahead.
Playing against a very-dangerous Nooksack Valley team, the Wolves battled almost evenly on the scoreboard in the second half, but couldn’t overcome an early deficit and fell 52-30 on their home floor.
The non-conference loss snaps a five-game winning streak and sends Coupeville into winter break carrying a 6-2 record on the season.
When the Wolves return to action Jan. 3, they’ll travel to Chimacum for one more non-league tune-up, before playing their final eight regular season games against North Sound Conference foes.
CHS, at 1-0 in league play, is currently tied with Cedar Park Christian atop the six-team conference standings.
Saturday’s game, coming against a top-notch 1A school which lives and thrives in a brutal 1A/2A/3A mega-conference, was always going to be one of the toughest games on Coupeville’s schedule.
But, like the saying goes, you have to beat the best to be the best.
Or, in this case, go toe-to-toe (and chest-to-chest) with the best to get better.
The chests in question belonged to Wolf freshman guard Maddie Georges and the poor Pioneer she obliterated on the game’s best play.
Senior point guard Scout Smith had the ball for Coupeville, and was looking for a slice of daylight to make a dash to the hoop.
Enter Georges, who delivered “The Screen o’ Death,” giving her older teammate room to rumble.
Some screens are half-hearted. Some screens are held for .00002 of a second, then forgotten about. Some screens arrive too late.
This screen, set by a scrappy frosh, was none of those things.
Georges slid into place and held fast, absorbing the collision and dropping the incoming, oblivious Pioneer flat on her butt, sending her sliding several feet across the shiny hardwood.
In a game which Coupeville lost, in a game against very strong competition, it was plays like that one, maybe only noticed by a handful of viewers, which speak the loudest.
Combine that with some smart, explosive scoring moves by seasoned pros Smith, Chelsea Prescott, and Avalon Renninger, and there was a lot to like about how the Wolves played.
The only problem is, Nooksack is a battle-hardened team which jumps on every mistake, no matter how small, and can turn one error into two or three quick buckets before the tide can be stemmed.
And that’s hard to counter.
Case in point, the first quarter, as Coupeville fell behind 6-0, then got a jolt to the nervous system when Izzy Wells came amblin’ up court, slid to the outside and drained a beauty of a three-ball from the left side.
The ball had barely finished rippling through the net, with the crowd’s screams still rising, and BAM, Nooksack answered with a three-ball of its own, followed by a steal and some ensuing free throws.
Wells slapped home a layup, off of Coupeville breaking the Pioneer press, but then WHAM, Nooksack stole an inbounds pass, turning the interception into a layup in one silky-smooth motion.
That was the tone of the game – the Wolves worked hard, pulled off a solid play, only to be gutted as Nooksack answered with an immediate hail of points.
Smith scorched the net for a three-ball from the side with just a few ticks left on the clock in the first quarter, but the Pioneers answered with their own trey to close the frame, then ran off 10 straight points to open the second.
Nooksack’s final bucket during that game-busting surge came off of a steal and breakaway, pushing the lead out to 26-8, but it also marked the end of the Pioneer domination.
From that moment on, the Wolves buckled down, and held their own over the final 2.5 quarters, hanging within 26-22 over the final 20 minutes.
Prescott stood tall, draining several pull-up jumpers with arms in her face, while Smith threw down three consecutive buckets during a 6-0 run of her own in the third quarter.
The middle one of that trio of baskets joined George’s “Screen o’ Death” as the other standout play of the game.
Looking for someone to inbound the ball to, Prescott suddenly reared back and, recalling her days as a baseball star in little league, hucked a full-court pass.
Out ahead of the defense, Smith never broke stride, hauling in the pass like older brother’s Hunter and CJ once did on the gridiron, before curving back inside and pounding home the layup.
Toss in a pretty dang gorgeous curling layup from Renninger, quality work on the boards from elbow-flingin’ freshman Carolyn Lhamon, and nice hustle from all involved, and the Wolves have little reason to hang their heads.
Coupeville is a good team, potentially a very good one, and it just ran into a well-seasoned, strongly-coached squad which should hold its own in their juggernaut of a league.
A loss is a loss, but some are better than others, and this very much lands in the category of a “good” loss.
Smith paced the Wolves with a team-high 12 points, taking her career total to 221 and counting.
She passed Linda Cheshier (210), Lisa Roehl (216), and Beth Mouw (216) on the all-time Wolf girls scoring chart, and is a bucket shy of tying Annette Jameson (223) for 50th place with a program which started in 1974.
Smith is not the only CHS player on the cusp of getting historical, however.
Prescott banged home seven to back her up, and, with 192 career points, is close to cracking the 200-point barrier herself.
Renninger and Wells rounded out Saturday’s scoring attack, with six and five points, respectively, while Anya Leavell, Mollie Bailey, Hannah Davidson, Georges, Lhamon, Audrianna Shaw, and Kylie Van Velkinburgh also saw floor time.
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