Cassidy Moody played in two Wolf wins Thursday, dropping in 12 points combined. (John Fisken photo)
If they quit now, they’re perfect.
Of course, the Coupeville Middle School girls’ basketball squads plan to play the rest of their 10-game schedule, but opening night was so flawless, it may be hard to top.
Romping to three wins in three games against visiting Chimacum, the Wolves opened with a thriller, then put together back-to-back blowouts to cap the evening.
The CMS 7th grade varsity escaped with a 22-21 victory that was sealed with a block at the buzzer from big-game pro Chelsea Prescott, while the 8th graders ran away with a 29-8 varsity win and 36-20 JV triumph.
Despite being severely outnumbered, the seven-woman Wolf 7th grade team made up for their lack of bodies with good old-fashioned skills and grit.
Baffled a bit by the Cowboy press in the early going, they fell behind 5-0 and had trouble getting the ball across mid-court.
A jumper from Brooke Ausman finally got Coupeville in the score-book in 2016, and then, once they settled down and got over what seemed a bit like first-game jitters, the Wolves were off to the races.
Prescott, who already owns a jump-stop finishing move which is rare at her level, torched the nets for a game-high 12, while teammate Morgan Pease thoroughly dominated play in the paint.
Using her height and superior reach, Pease snatched rebound after rebound, rejected a string of Chimacum shots and convinced the Cowboys the last place they wanted to be was anywhere in the lane.
She also showed a light touch on the offensive end, dropping in all six of her points during a 10-4 second quarter run that staked Coupeville to a lead it would never relinquish.
Pease’s final bucket came on a dish from point guard Mollie Bailey, and she banked it in off the glass with a single second remaining on the clock, sending the Wolves into the break up 14-11.
Coupeville stayed hot coming out of halftime, with Prescott ripping off three straight buckets to stretch the lead to nine, then things got interesting.
Chimacum closed the game on a 10-2 surge, with a sweet jumper from the side off of Prescott’s fingertips the lone (and huge, it turned out) Wolf bucket.
Clinging to a 22-21 lead, CMS survived two scares in the final five seconds.
After missing from point-blank range, the Cowboys got the ball back with 1.9 seconds to go.
The shooter took the in-bounds pass on the left side, whirled, went to fire up the potential game-winner and … BOOM … Prescott, catching nothing but ball all the way, spiked it out of bounds volleyball-style.
The live-action punctuation mark set off a celebration from her teammates and fans that might still be going.
Ausman and Bailey each dropped in a bucket to back Prescott and Pease, while Genna Wright was an absolute wild woman on defense and Thora Iverson and Catherine Lhamon both chipped in with hustle and hard work.
The 8th graders, who had enough players to play two games, realized nothing they were about to do would match the edge-of-your-seat thrills the 7th graders threw down, so they opted to just go out and crush folks.
The varsity, spurred by the defense of hard-charging ball-hawk Avalon Renninger, scored the game’s final 15 points to blow things open.
Renninger scored all 10 of her game-high points off of steals and breakaway buckets, while Emma Mathusek knocked down eight points on a variety of inside moves.
Maya Toomey-Stout (4), Hannah Davidson (3), Cassidi Moody (2) and Scout Smith (2) also scored, with Davidson operating as a force on the boards at both ends of the floor.
In the JV nightcap the Wolves used two epic runs to bust things wide open.
The first, a 12-0 surge with Moody draining eight, gave Coupeville its first lead after Chimacum opened the game by knocking down three straight jumpers.
Then, clinging to a narrow 14-12 lead early in the second, the Wolves ramped up their defense and picked apart the Cowboys.
Unable to successfully get the ball up-court, Chimacum watched in horror as Coupeville ripped off 16 straight points, almost all on steals in the back-court, to close out the half.
With ferry departure time rapidly approaching, the JV contest went with a running clock in the second half, and, while the scoring went down, the Wolves still had a few more highlight-reel plays left in them.
Cynthia Rachal and Jaden Marrs capped the game with back-to-back buckets — the first of the season for both players — then celebrated in style.
Rachal hopped up and down in place after her shot hit the bottom of the net, while Marrs raised two fingers and waggled them at her family in the crowd, huge smile covering her face.
Moody paced the Wolves with 10, while Seraina Weatherford, Megan Thorn and Ashleigh Battaglia dropped in six apiece.
Tia Wurzrainer (4), Rachal (2) and Marrs (2) rounded out the JV scorers as every Wolf to see floor time tallied points.
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