Balanced Arapahoe dismantling girls basketball foes

Look up and down the Arapahoe (Centennial) girls basketball roster and you won't see a single superstar. Heck, you won't even see a double-digit scorer.

Now look at the Warriors' record.

Arapahoe has jumped to an 11-0 start entering Wednesday night's game at Eaglecrest, has vaulted to No. 2 in the Class 5A rankings, and has done it all with no player averaging above 8.5 points a game.

"Our team has been like a family for so long, so it's cool that we don't have a superstar," senior point guard Carly Buechler said. "We're all just superstars together. We all make each other better and we don't care who scores the most. It's just about winning."

The Warriors haven't merely been ransacking inferior opponents. Their schedule is replete with quality wins, including those against perennial power ThunderRidge (Highlands Ranch) in a December tournament, a title-clinching victory against Rock Canyon (Highlands Ranch) in that tournament and a triumph against 4A No.1 Broomfield (the Eagles' only loss).

The Warriors' lone single-digit win was a 37-35 decision Jan. 9 against Centennial League-rival Cherry Creek (Greenwood Village).

While no player stands out in the scoring tally, 10 different Warriors score regularly.

"Some of it is that it's just part of our philosophy," Arapahoe coach Jerry Knafelc said. "We have a group of eight seniors that have been together playing an awful lot of varsity for the last three years. We share the ball. We're not a one-pony show."

Knafelc said his squad doesn't even have a de facto go-to girl. Even in the final seconds of a tie game, the player taking the final shot would vary on a game-to-game basis, based on matchups and the style of defense employed by the opponent.

"It's awesome that way, because a team can't scout you very easy," said senior forward Stacie Lukasiewicz, who averages a team-high 8.5 points. "That's huge for us, just because every game, a different girl will score in double figures."

The ThunderRidge win — it was a 50-38 decision in the ThunderRidge/Rock Canyon Tipoff Tournament — carried added significance, because it helped atone for a bitter loss in Sweet 16 last season.

The Warriors fell 44-43, and the details still haunt Knafelc. He remembers that his team led for 31 minutes, 35 seconds of the 32-minute contest and that the Warriors "would have won if we shot free throws at a reasonable rate."

This time, Arapahoe closed strong. The Warriors outscored the Grizzlies 19-5 in the final quarter.

"It was nice to go out and play better, and we shot free throws well down the stretch," Knafelc said. "It was a really close game in the fourth quarter, and when they had to foul us, we actually sealed the deal with free throws."

For the players, the early-season victory served as a mental hurdle.

"We were looking for revenge," Buechler said. "We knew that we should have won that game last year, and we knew it wasn't going to be a problem this year. We knew we were the better team."

In a cosmic coincidence, Buechler and sister Alex Buechler each had exactly 80 points (7.3 average) in the first 11 games.

Knafelc, in his third season at the helm after spending four years as an assistant with the boys program, liberally uses his 10 players. Whether it's rotating skyscrapers Mikaela Moore, Savanah Nelson and Molly Riedel in the post or finding minutes for sophomore Jennah Knafelc, everyone is going to play and expects to contribute in some fashion.

"If you're not scoring, you're doing something else," Lukasiewicz said. "That's why in our games, we try not to just win in points. We like to attack the rebounds, get the steals and everything else."

Seniors Kera Riley and Karlyn Johnson also have been steady for the Warriors, serving as reliable perimeter threats while shooting a combined 32-for-39 from the free-throw line (82.1 percent).

While many viewed the ThunderRidge win as paramount, Lukasiewicz, an 85.7-percent foul shooter, favored the 57-46 victory against Broomfield on Dec. 18. And why not? Broomfield serves as the most notable long-term validation that what the Warriors are doing works.

The Eagles, with a similar 10-player rotation and balanced scoring, won five straight 4A championships before falling in the quarterfinals last season.

That the Warriors were able to beat the Eagles at their own game spoke volumes.

"It was good, because I think they pushed us and challenged us in some of the areas that we need to get better at," Lukasiewicz said. "And we did. I think that one was the first true team effort. It was the one game that we finally put everything together."

Now the Warriors will try to keep it going and put together a substantial postseason run. If they do, it might be difficult to choose an MVP at the end.