Prior to Friday’s game against Oak Harbor, the Lake Stevens girls basketball team was ranked 10th among class 4A teams in the state.
Lake Stevens was also the preseason favorite to win the WesCo North.
Little did the Vikings know they had trespassed into Wildcat Country the minute they stepped on the court.
Junior Mietra Smollack scored a career-high 32 points and Jessica Denmon added 18, also a career high, and by the time the cheering finally stopped, Oak Harbor was a 70-65 winner.
With the win, the Wildcats are now 4-2 in league games and 8-2 overall, and are in fourth place in the WesCo North.
Coming off a disastrous 49-29 loss to Stanwood Wednesday night, Oak Harbor set the tone against Lake Stevens right from the opening tip, jumping out to a 21-13 lead after the first eight minutes of play.
The Wildcats were on fire from the field in the first period with Denmon and Janay Baeyen connecting for three-point goals, Clair Thiel scoring three times from the free throw line and Smollack also hitting three charity shots and a basket.
Baeyen scored nine points in the game and Thiel had six.
“I told the girls whatever it was they did tonight to get ready for the game, do it again,” a smiling coach Brett McLeod said after the game.
In the second period the Wildcats’ shooting cooled down a bit and Lake Stevens battled back to narrow the margin to six points, 26-20, with 4:39 remaining in the quarter. But Oak Harbor heated up once again as the clock wound down, pushing the lead back to 10 points and finished the first half with a 41-30 advantage.
Smollack scored 10 points in the second period and Denmon had six, including her second three-pointer of the game.
“I’m amazed,” Smollack said. “I love my team, they’re like the best. They work so hard together. Lake Stevens swept us last year and we said it wasn’t going to happen again. I’m so excited, I couldn’t ask for a better team to play with.”
Denmon opened the third quarter with her third three-point basket to get Oak Harbor off and running again.
“We played really good defense tonight,” Denmon said. “We started pulling together and started hitting some of our shots.”
The Vikings got their fast break going in the third period and cut the Wildcats’ lead to six points on two occasions, but were still trailing by nine points, 54-45, heading into the final quarter.
Early in the fourth quarter, the Wildcats went cold from the field and nearly three minutes expired before Smollack knocked down the first shot from the floor.
The Vikings kept chipping away at the lead and with 1:19 remaining, Karri Gallagher hit a basket to tie the score, 63-63.
A Smollack basket put the Wildcats back in front to stay, and Denmon went 1-of-2 from the free throw line with 30 seconds remaining to give Oak Harbor a little breathing room.
Denmon hit two more from the charity stripe with just over nine seconds left and Smollack closed the game out with a pair of free throws as time expired.
“I thought the girls played really well tonight and we scored more points in the first half than we did in the entire game Wednesday night,” McLeod said. “Maybe it was the pregame dinner we had at Steve and Doris Smollack’s house. We’ll have to have Steve cook for us again before our next home game.”
Gallagher scored 18 points for the Vikings and Mary Ochiltree had 12.
Oak Harbor hosts Marysville-Pilchuck on Thursday. Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m.
Oak Harbor 70, Lake Stevens 65
Lake Stevens 13 17 15 20 — 65
Oak Harbor 21 20 13 16 — 70
Lake Stevens (65) — Gallagher 8 2-2 18, Ochiltree 4 3-5 12, B. Tri 4 3-4 11, Aanstad 4 2-3 10, Housden 1 0-3 2, Johnson 1 0-0 2, Tate 1 0-0 2, K. Tri 3 0-0 8. Totals 26 10-17 65.
Oak Harbor (70) — Smollack 11 9-11 32, Denmon 4 7-8 18, Russell 0 0-0 0, Baeyen 3 2-2 9, Thiel 0 6-10 6, Chong 1 1-2 3, Smith 0 0-1 0, Hendricksen 1 0-0 2. Totals 20 25-34 70.
