Brooklyn Pope springs into action. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
The tide is turning.
After years of being bashed about by King’s, the Coupeville Middle School girls’ basketball program acquitted itself quite nicely Thursday afternoon.
Winning two of three games against the visiting Knights, the Wolves continue to play strongly as the season reaches the halfway point.
How the day played out:
Level 3:
Thursdays are reverse day, with games going 3-2-1, instead of 1-2-3, and that helped Coupeville get off to a blazing start.
Sort of.
The Wolves actually failed to score in the first quarter of the day’s opening rumble, but so did King’s, leaving things frozen at 0-0 seven minutes into play.
After that, the defenses cracked a bit, or the shots got a little more precise, with CMS eventually rallying for a nail-biting 18-16 win.
The victory lifts the Wolves to 2-1 on the campaign.
While the ball wasn’t staying in the bucket in the early going, that was partially because the hometown squad was playing inspired defense.
Kaleigha Millison pulled off a snappy hustle play, tiptoeing down the sideline as she grabbed a runaway ball and flipped it back over her head to keep the action flowing.
Meanwhile Brooklyn Pope shut down the Knights on the boards, snagging rebounds left and right, while teammate Claire Lachnit was like a bumblebee, madly buzzing from side to side, chasing down every Knight who dared to touch the ball.
Bouncing off the floor at a steady rate, Lachnit proved surprisingly resilient as well, popping up and charging back into action while shaking various body parts to restore feeling.
If her coaches thought about pulling the plucky ballhawk from the game to slow her rate of bruises, they relented as each time she flashed a huge smile, her joy overshadowing any pain.
Coupeville finally got on the board thanks to Cassandra Powers, who nailed a turnaround jumper, and with some big buckets from Pope, the Wolves rolled into halftime tied 6-6 with King’s.
Twice CMS snatched the lead in the third, only to have the Knights convert three straight offensive rebound putbacks to stake themselves to a 14-10 lead heading into the final frame.
King’s popped for one more bucket to open the fourth, then the Wolves clamped down, holding their foes scoreless for the final six minutes.
That gave Pope, Powers, and Millison time to chip away at the lead, with the winning bucket coming off of a rebound with less than a minute to play.
The Knights had the ball in their hands at the end but couldn’t get the tying bucket as Coupeville came full tilt on defense, setting off a huge celebration among CMS students in the stands.
Pope, who was a powerhouse all game, finished with a game-high 12 points, with Powers knocking down four and Millison rounding out things with a bucket.
Emma Cushman, precise point guard Cameron Van Dyke, Zayne Roos, Selah Rivera, Zariyah Allen, and the turbo-charged Lachnit also saw floor time for the Wolves.
Isabella de Souza Oliveira Mc Fetridge looks for an open teammate.
Level 2:
Coupeville blew the doors off the gym in the early going, then quietly added to their lead quarter by quarter in a 28-14 romp.
The victory lifts the Wolves to a stellar 3-1.
This one was briefly tied 2-2 about a minute into play, before CMS went on a tear to build a 12-4 lead by the first break.
Kennedy O’Neill, slashing hard to the hoop, pestering King’s ballhandlers until they didn’t know which way to turn, and flying down the floor like a missile, brought the main pain.
She peppered the net for six of her team-best 12 points in the first quarter, while also pulling off the best basketball IQ play of the day.
After being mugged while slapping home a breakaway layup, O’Neill had a chance to make it a three-point play the hard way with a free throw.
When her charity shot rolled off the rim and bounced free, nine players and both refs stood stock still, as if a second free throw was coming. Which it wasn’t.
Breaking the frozen portrait, O’Neill alertly shot forward, snagged the live ball and put it back up, showing at least one person in the gym knew the rules inside out.
The Wolves stretched the lead out to 18-8 by the half, with Amiaya Curry drilling a particularly gorgeous jumper.
It came on a play where the Wolf guard came strolling up to the key at the speed Matthew McConaughey drawls his dialogue, then suddenly lunged forward and drove home the exclamation point.
“Alright, alright … alright,” indeed.
The overall scoring was bit muted after the halftime break, but the Wolves pushed the margin out to 24-12 through three quarters before holding King’s scoreless for the first six minutes and 56 seconds of the seven-minute final frame.
O’Neill, who leads all Wolf scorers this season, netted 12 more points to lead the way, while Willow Leedy-Bonifas and Sophia Batterman both added four apiece.
Rhylin Price, Amelia Crowder, Allison Powers, and Curry all scored a bucket, with Sage Stavros, Isabella de Souza Oliveira Mc Fetridge, and Elizabeth Marshall bringing the fire on the defensive end of the floor.
Ari Cunningham dives for a loose ball.
Level 1:
A vintage King’s team, populated with three-ball shooters who all had mad hops, brutal speed, and the ability to attack the rim with both hands, proved to be too much for the Wolves in the finale.
The Knights cracked the game open with a 19-0 run midway through the first quarter and romped to a 48-18 win.
The loss drops the Wolves, who played King’s straight up in the second and fourth quarters, to 1-3 on the season.
CMS 8th grader Adie Maynes nailed a driving jumper to knot things up at 2-2, then the visitors went to work.
An Ava Lucero free throw at the very tail end of the opening quarter stopped King’s huge surge, but a 21-3 deficit heading into the break proved to be too much to overcome.
Tenley Stuurmans fired up the Wolves in the second quarter, scoring five points and loudly rejecting a Knights shot during a defensive stand, while Sydney Van Dyke netted a note-perfect jumper from the top of the key.
But while CMS won the quarter (7-6) it still trailed 27-10 at the half, and a 15-2 King’s run in the third sealed the deal.
Down by 30, the Wolves faced a running clock in the fourth quarter but played the visitors to a 6-6 standstill.
Lillian Ketterling, who fought valiantly all game while being smacked and poked, hit a layup, while Stuurmans continued to work hard down in the paint.
She finished with a team-high 11 points, with Maynes (2), Van Dyke (2), Ketterling (2), and Lucero (1) also netting points.
Olivia Hall, Taylor Marrs, Laken Simpson, Tamsin Ward, Marin Winger, and Ari Cunningham rounded out the active roster.
A portion of Coupeville’s bright basketball future.
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