Hannah Davidson was a force on the boards Saturday as Coupeville won its home opener. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
Scout Smith, who leads the Wolves in scoring, passed eight players on the CHS girls career scoring chart and now sits at #65.
It was beautiful, then kind of scary, then beautifully scary.
But it all worked out in the end.
Leading from start to finish Saturday, but veering madly from a 15-point lead right before halftime to just a two-point margin with a minute to play, the Coupeville High School varsity girls basketball team lived dangerously.
But the Wolves made the plays they needed to down the stretch, especially on the defensive end of the floor, and survived to beat visiting Orcas Island 34-31.
The non-conference win, coming in Coupeville’s home opener, lifts the squad to 2-1, while possibly adding some grey hair to the head of coach Scott Fox.
When his players were locked-in Saturday, they were highly-efficient, deadly on the run and on the finish, and on their way to a blowout win.
But when they weren’t on, such as when they netted just four of 23 free throw attempts, they gave the visiting Vikings hope, and hope can be dangerous.
Up 24-9 shortly before the halftime break, Coupeville still led by 11 late in the third, only to watch in horror as Orcas found its groove.
A 10-1 run stretching from late in the third to late in the fourth, started and finished by three-balls splashing down from the skies above, cut the Wolf lead to just 31-29.
For the first time all night, or at least since way back when the game was briefly 2-1 in favor of the Wolves, Orcas was a single shot away from ruining everyone’s evening.
But Coupeville had an answer, hitting first with a little offense — a free throw from Chelsea Prescott and a sweet lil’ jumper from Hannah Davidson, off of a drive ‘n dish by Prescott.
That stretched the lead back out to 34-29, and while Orcas got one more basket, using a put-back of a miss to slice things to 34-31 with 1:02 on the clock, the Wolves didn’t break.
The home team didn’t score in that final 62 seconds, missing two free throws with 4.1 seconds to play, when even one made shot would have been nirvana.
But the Wolves also didn’t allow Orcas to get a decent shot off, much less score.
Freshman Nezi Keiper came up especially huge in the game’s final seconds, ripping down a key rebound on one side of the floor, then forcing a turnover on the other end.
Coupeville is a young team, with three fab frosh — Keiper, Carolyn Lhamon, and Maddie Georges — getting quality floor time, while four sophomores are also on the team.
Youth is learning under fire, and coming up strongly.
While Keiper and Lhamon were ferocious on the boards, teaming with senior Hannah Davidson to clean the glass, Georges delivered three gorgeous long-range jumpers, each shot a knife through the collective heart of the Vikings.
Two of those baskets came in the first, when the freshman point guard teamed up with her senior mentor, Scout Smith, to score 10 points as CHS jumped out to a 14-4 advantage.
Smith opened the scoring by jumping a pass, spearing an incoming ball, then taking off the other way for a slick breakaway bucket.
After that she added baskets on a give and go play, worked to perfection with Davidson, and a careening layup in which she went airborne, then flipped the ball to her other hand at the last second to avoid a would-be blocker coming in hot.
Toss in Davidson thunking home a bucket on a strong power move in the paint and Prescott rolling sharply to her left, then flicking a layup up and over her defender’s outstretched arm, and the Wolves looked super-sharp in the opening frame.
That continued well into the second quarter, a frame in which sophomore Izzy Wells carried the brunt of the scoring load, while Tia Wurzrainer was the one and only Wolf to go to the free throw line and hit both of her shots in the same trip.
Orcas carved its 24-9 deficit down to 24-12 right before the half, then scored the first five points of the third quarter, but Coupeville didn’t crack.
Smith went coast to coast for a bucket to break the run, before Avalon Renninger drained a shot which hit the rim, rolled around, and around, and around some more, before finally running out of steam and flopping through the net.
That all set up the frantic fourth, a time when the Wolves might have bent (a bit), but never broke.
Headed into another busy week, when it will face Friday Harbor, Concrete, and Bush, with the first and last of that trio on the road, that’s a true positive.
Smith finished with a game-high 11 points, a night which allowed her to pass eight more players on the Wolf girls basketball career scoring list.
It was a group which included well-known names like Yashmeen Knox, Marie Hesselgrave, Sherry Bonacci, and Aimee Messner, and Smith, with 171 points and counting, now sits at #65 on the chart.
Prescott, who is hot on the trail of her older teammate (she’s only 15 points off of Smith), finished with five Saturday, while Georges (6), Davidson (4), Wells (4), Renninger (2), and Wurzrainer (2) also scored.
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