Hailey Cook dribbles up the court against Petersburg on Feb. 22. Wrangell dropped the first home game against Petersburg, but stormed back to win the second weekend matchup.
This year's girls high school basketball team has had quite a roller coaster of a season. Some days they're unstoppable, and opponents have no answer for the sharpshooting acumen of Christina Johnson or the post-presence of Alana Harrison and Alexis Easterly. On other days, the offense falls flat and the shots simply fail to fall.
In their two-game homestand against Petersburg on Feb. 21-22, the Wrangell homecoming crowd witnessed the full spectrum of the girls basketball team. They fell on Friday 32-42 but rallied on Saturday for an impressive 41-34 victory.
Wrangell's twin towers in Harrison and Easterly carried the load on night one. Both players scored 11 points apiece. Easterly was able to get to the line a handful of times while Harrison dipped into her three-point bag to find some much-needed second-half scoring for the Wolves.
Hailey Cook gave Wrangell a spurt of hope toward the end of the first night. Scoring seven second-half points including a big fourth-quarter three. But in the end, Wrangell was unable to keep up with their rival's scoring output, an issue exasperated by six missed free throws - five of which came in the fourth quarter.
But the second night told a different story.
Wrangell opened the Saturday spectacle with quite a run, holding Petersburg to just 10 points in the entire opening half. But more importantly, Cook's hot hand from the previous day did not cool off on night two. The guard scored back-to-back three-pointers in the second quarter, five points in the third, and three more in the fourth. Her 14 points led Wrangell in scoring.
Harrison added 10 more to the Wolves' tally, while Easterly scored nine. The semi-close final score of 41-34 doesn't tell the entire story of the game, though. From tip-off, Wrangell had the upper hand, and it was clear who the night belonged to. But a late Petersburg rally brought the score tighter than head coach Christy Good probably would have liked.
Wrangell will be on a bye this coming weekend, giving Good's team some well-earned rest ahead of the Southeast championship in Ketchikan on March 5-8. Both first- and second-place teams will automatically qualify for state. The third-place finisher is eligible for an at-large bid to the tournament held in Anchorage on March 13-15.
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