Junior guard Scout Smith threw down a career-high 15 points Tuesday, sparking Coupeville’s varsity basketball squad to a huge win over Sultan. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
I give you two players.
One is a pass-first, defend-second and maybe, possibly, shoot-third point guard.
The other one was coming back from a bad fall which left her wearing a neck brace in a faraway ER just a couple of days ago.
Jump to Tuesday, however, and Scout Smith and Chelsea Prescott were something else entirely — rampaging, lights-out scorers intent on kidney-punching their rivals with sweet jumpers, silky layups and perfectly-lofted free throws.
Carrying a bigger chunk of the offensive game plan than normal, Smith and Prescott combined for 27 points, sparking the Coupeville High School varsity girls basketball squad to a 44-34 rout of visiting Sultan.
The win, the third-straight and fourth in the last five games for the Wolves, lifts them to 2-0 in North Sound Conference play, 4-4 overall.
It leaves Coupeville in a tie atop the league standings with state power King’s headed to a showdown in the new year.
Both teams finish 2018 with non-conference tilts, then meet in Shoreline Jan. 4 to kick off the remainder of the 10-game league schedule.
While King’s is one of the premier programs in the state, Coupeville can’t be overlooked. Especially after proving they have far more than just one offensive option.
With leading scorer Lindsey Roberts running wild on defense Tuesday, her younger teammates stepped up and eased her job on the offensive end of the floor.
Smith knocked down nine of her game-high (and career-high) 15 in the second quarter, when the Wolves seized control of the game, while Prescott banked in six of her 12 in the third frame.
Coupeville entered the game having broken 50 points in back-to-back games, and while the 44 they scored Tuesday was their third-best team total of the season, it took a few moments for the Wolves to get going.
Actually, more like a few minutes, as CHS didn’t hit a field goal for the first seven minutes and 52 seconds of the game.
The unforgiving rim finally played nice with just eight ticks left in the opening quarter, and only when Avalon Renninger slashed to the hoop, split three defenders and dared the hoop to refuse her.
It didn’t dare.
Thanks to stingy defense, and three different Wolves – Ema Smith, Scout Smith and Roberts – hitting free throws, Coupeville was just a bucket behind when Renninger drained her runner.
Escaping the first quarter with a hard-fought 6-6 tie, the Wolves figured enough tip-toeing around. Time to drop the hammer.
Not that the scrappy Turks went down all that easily, however.
Scout Smith kicked off her whirlwind second quarter by tossing in a running bank shot from the left, while being roughed-up in full view of blind refs, but Sultan responded with a modest 6-2 run of its own.
A three-ball from Ema Smith, who stopped on a dime, rose up and dropped the trey right in the face of her defender, kept the Wolves close, while a put-back on a rebound by Prescott gave CHS a brief lead.
Coupeville finally broke through for good midway through the second, and it came thanks to Scout Smith seizing the moment.
The junior guard takes great delight in setting up her teammates with pinpoint passes, but on this night, she pulled the ball back into her body frequently and went to town.
Charging head-long into the fray, keeping Turk defenders backpedaling and falling over themselves, “Scooter” tossed a swooping layup high off the backboard, drained a sweet fall-away jumper, then twirled a lil’ curler that kissed the glass and plopped through the net with a happy little sigh.
Playing in front of big brothers CJ and Hunter, in town for the holidays, Scout Smith was making a statement – my court, my time.
And she was getting help from all sides, whether it was Roberts and Hannah Davidson crashing the boards, Tia Wurzrainer driving Sultan ball-handlers insane with her smothering defense, or her team’s superb passing.
Coupeville was as patient Tuesday as it has ever been this season, with one Wolf after another making the smart pass, looking for the best option, setting each other up, then slapping hands after made buckets.
Ema Smith and Prescott capped the first half with a play which perfectly epitomized the team-first style the Wolves were rockin’ all game.
Soaring between two Turks, Ema Smith yanked down an offensive rebound, then was knocked to her knees as she came back to Earth.
Instead of losing the ball, instead of traveling, she kept the ball held aloft, flicking it to Prescott, who was alone on the side, before going down face-first.
Prescott, without skipping a beat, twirled into the air, lofted the ball, and splashed home the jumper.
Ema Smith, sprawled on the floor (and possibly untying the shoelaces of any Turks near her hands), pumped her fist, then jumped up and joined her sophomore teammate as they loped back on defense.
Up 21-18 at the half, the Wolves continued to play smart ball after the break, stretching the lead out inch by inch and never giving Sultan a chance to carve into its deficit.
The Turks hit their only three-ball of the night early in the third, cutting the lead to a bucket for a millisecond, but Coupeville responded with authority.
Prescott and Scout Smith continued to knock down buckets, and once the lead blossomed to eight, the game stayed that way the remainder of the night.
The few times Sultan got a bucket down the stretch, the Wolves immediately answered.
And never more emphatically than when Coupeville broke the press with a quick pass to Roberts, who snatched the ball at mid-court, spun, and thundered the length of the court in about 1.3 steps before slapping home a psyche-crushing layup.
Coupeville didn’t play a perfect game, maybe, missing a fair amount of free throws for one thing, but it did play an inspired game.
There were 11 Wolves in uniform, and 11 Wolves used whatever amount of time they were given by coach David King to make an impact in their own personal way.
It was Nicole Laxton, down in the pits, wrestling for a rebound and yanking the ball away from her rival, her normally sunny exterior transformed by a glare which could cut through steel.
It was Davidson, shutting down the paint, and kicking beautiful passes to open teammates, a role player proving she can be a weapon on both ends of the floor.
And it was Wurzrainer, a defensive dynamo on the soccer field, who brings a burning intensity to her role as the spiritual successor to revered ball-hawks of past days like Kacie Kiel and Julia Myers.
Locked-in and ready to knock you on your keister, Wurzrainer and running mate Renninger are the specialists every good team needs and wants.
Scout Smith’s 15 gives her 99 career points at the varsity level, leaving her just a free throw shy of becoming only the 97th Wolf girl to reach triple-digit scoring since 1975.
Prescott is hot on her heels, and her 12 Tuesday gives her 88 on her short career (#104 all-time), while making it very likely there will soon be four active Wolf girls in the 100-point club.
Already there are Roberts (#25 with 382 points) and Ema Smith (#79 with 135), who went for seven and six, respectively, against Sultan.
Renninger tossed in three points, Mollie Bailey tickled the twines for a free throw to round out the scoring, while freshmen Ja’Kenya Hoskins and Izzy Wells also saw floor time.
