Mia Littlejohn, seen here during fall ball, had a team-high 13 points Wednesday in Coupeville’s win. (John Fisken photo)
A win is a beautiful thing.
Whether it’s by one point or 50 points, you put a W in the book, especially at home, and any little issues get swept to the side in the soft afterglow.
Case in point, the Coupeville High School girls’ basketball squad, which wasn’t perfect all game Wednesday, but was pretty close when it mattered.
Holding visiting Chimacum to just a single field goal over the final 12-minutes-plus, the Wolves broke open a tie game and ran away with a 41-28 victory in the 1A Olympic League opener for both schools.
The win, the third straight for Coupeville, lifts it to 3-1 overall, 1-0 in league play.
The Wolves also kept alive the second-longest winning streak in league history, improving to 19-0 in conference games dating back to the Olympic League’s debut in 2014.
Only Klahowya girls’ soccer has a longer active streak, having gone 20-0 over three complete fall seasons.
Coupeville, which trailed by five points midway through the second quarter, put the game on ice by thoroughly dominating the final quarter and a half.
Mikayla Elfrank broke a 22-22 tie when she slipped a pair of free throws through the twines with a little over four minutes left in the third, and then the Wolf defense got rabid.
Holding Chimacum without a field goal until a meaningless layup in the final 10 seconds of the game, CHS closed the game on a 19-6 tear, with five Wolves sharing the scoring load.
Tiffany Briscoe knocked down two more shots from the charity stripe, before Elfrank turned a mid-air steal into a breakaway bucket to close the third.
After that, the fourth was a prime example of five players meshing as one, as the Wolves forced a string of turnovers and turned them into easy buckets.
Lauren Grove made off with back-to-back steals, dishing to Lauren Rose and Elfrank for buckets, then was instantly rewarded for her team-first approach.
On the next play back court mate Mia Littlejohn bull-rushed a Chimacum ball-handler, picked her pocket, hip-checked the Cowboy into the third row of seats and flung a note-perfect pass to Grove for a breakaway lay-in of her own.
The play put a decisive stamp on the game, set off the Wolf bench into hysterics and capped a stellar night for Littlejohn.
The junior point guard tossed in a game-high 13, including three treys, made off with four steals, snatched two rebounds and handed out two assists.
Her three-ball timing was nearly flawless, with the first one banking off the backboard, the middle one tying the game heading into halftime and the final bomb pushing the lead into double digits.
Coupeville had opened the game strongly, hitting its first three shots en route to an early 7-2 lead.
Kailey Kellner drained a three-ball from the right corner on the game’s first play, before Briscoe aggressively went to the basket for back-to-back buckets off of set-ups from Littlejohn.
Then the Wolves hit their only down stretch of the night, as suddenly nothing would stay in the basket.
Balls rolled around, popped out and took weird spins, while Chimacum used a 10-0 surge to take its biggest lead of the game.
A trey from Littlejohn and a put-back off of a rebound by Kellner got the Wolves back on track, but they needed another three-ball right before the break to tie things up at 18-18 heading to the locker room.
While in there, CHS coach David King has a discussion with his team about its defensive effort and whatever he said, things clicked.
“We had a lot better energy level in the second half,” King said.
A switch from a zone to a man-to-man defense greatly frustrated Chimacum, and pesky Wolf defenders like Kyla Briscoe and Kalia Littlejohn helped the starters drive the Cowboy ball-handers batty.
When they weren’t getting actual steals, the Wolves forced several turnovers along the sideline as Chimacum players frequently panicked when double-teamed.
Coupeville spread its offense among six players, with Mia Littlejohn’s 13 backed by nine from Kellner and six apiece from Elfrank and Tiffany Briscoe.
Rose knocked down five and Grove added a bucket to round out the scoring.
Kellner snatched a team-high eight rebounds, while Elfrank nabbed six. Grove had four assists to top the team.
Coupeville’s JV team sat out the night, as Chimacum was unable to field a second squad thanks to injuries and ineligible players.
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