Lake Stevens girls basketball wins at the dome

Published 6:00 pm Wednesday, March 4, 2026

TACOMA — The Vikings had enough.

The No. 10 Lake Stevens girls basketball team (22-3) had gone out in its first game at the Tacoma Dome for the Class 4A state tournament in each of the last two seasons. Senior Kendel Kuehl had one message for her team the night before their round of 12 game against No. 7 Bothell (20-8) on Wednesday morning.

“She said, ‘we’re not losing tomorrow,’ and that’s the mentality we came in with this game, is that we can compete with anybody here,” head coach Seth Dodge said.

That refusal to let history repeat itself showed with a memorable performance from multiple Vikings in a 55-48 win over the Cougars. The result set up a quarterfinal showdown with the reigning champion in No. 1 Davis on Thursday morning.

The Tupua sisters led the way on the score sheet, as senior Keira Isabelle Tupua (nine rebounds) had a team-high 21 points on 8-for-16 shooting while junior Noelani Tupua added 16 points and five boards. Kuehl was a big part of a 41-31 rebounding advantage for the Vikings, pulling down eight boards on a nine-point day.

Cougars star senior Charlotte Lipkin lit up the net for Bothell in her final game, scoring 26 points on five 3-pointers as Dodge’s team adjusted to her shooting as the game went on. Kayleah Hawkins added eight points for Bothell, but a 26.5% shooting night forced by Lake Stevens was enough to sink the No. 7 seed. Lake Stevens shot 44.9% from the field.

Keira Isabelle Tupua seemed alright with Lipkin taking on most of the offensive burden for Bothell.

“It takes an entire team to beat us,” she said. “I think we all came alive and came together to push past a very good Bothell team.”

After falling behind 7-4 thanks to a held ball, travel and other turnovers, the Vikings woke up midway through the first. Keira drained a pull-up 3-pointer before her sister Noelani took over the game.

Noelani, a 6-foot junior with plenty of state experience by this point, used a jab step to create space before hitting a 3. She then helped the Vikings press full-court, notching a steal. She took the ball the rest of the way, finishing a right-to-left eurostep before getting a block on the other end.

She finished with three blocks and two steals and took on the duty of guarding Lipkin at times.

“She’s such a gamer,” Dodge said of the younger Tupua. “She can do things on offense, but her ability to defend is crazy … she does it with grace.”

Keira put the finishing touches on a 10-0 run with a punch gather layup, while Lipkin hit a 3 to cut the lead down to six to end the quarter.

Lipkin would make the second quarter hers, scoring 15 of her 18 first-half points in the frame. Bothell scored 17 points as a team in the quarter.

Lipkin started the scoring with a stepthrough layup, then a catch-and-shoot triple to respond to a floater from Keira. After the game leveled out defensively, Lipkin heated up midway through the quarter.

She hit another stepthrough, and another triple before Noelani seemingly ended her momentum by stopping a fastbreak and taking the rebound coast-to-coast for an and-1 layup.

Lipkin wasn’t finished. She hit another catch-and-shoot 3-pointer off a baseline out-of-bounds play before getting fouled and making both free throws to tie the game at 27 going into halftime.

Dodge knew he had to slow the UC Santa Barbara commit down at halftime. He left it to his players to get it done.

“(Lipkin) was hitting shots and doing unbelievable things and she’s a great player. … I think the girls just buckled in,” Dodge said.

Lipkin scored eight points the rest of the way.

Still, Bothell showed plenty of fight, not allowing a Lake bucket until senior Tessa Anastasi (five points) hit a free-throw line jumper more than two minutes into the third. Lipkin was able to get off a corner 3 on a late contest, though, while the Vikings committed a tough foul in the bonus to give some hard-to-come-by points to the Cougars at the charity stripe.

Heading into the fourth down 39-38, the Vikings came up with their best offensive quarter of the morning. Though she picked up her fourth foul to start the quarter, Keira pushed the pace with aggression and hit a transition jumper on the right side to give Lake the lead.

She then found sophomore Autumn Swobody (two points, four rebounds) for a midrange jumper to push the lead to three.

Anastasi tried to keep the run going with a steal, going coast-to-coast before Lipkin tracked her down for a block. The next possession, however, Noelani Tupua finished the job with another and-1 on a fallaway layup that only touched the net.

On a Bothell inbounds play with two minutes to go and Lake leading by three, Noelani swatted a layup and went coast-to-coast for another eurostep finish to restore the Vikings advantage to five.

With the defense heating up and the clock waning, Kuehl was ripped of the ball. The senior, perhaps charged by her own motivating words of “we’re not losing,” scrambled back to help recover the ball before getting fouled.

In the bonus, Keuhl and Keira did enough at the free-throw line to ice their first career wins at the Dome.

The win marked Lake Stevens’ fourth straight loser-out victory. That “we’re not losing” mindset has gotten the Vikings this far, and Keira and co. are still counting on it.

“That’s something we’ve been saying since (the first) loser-out game, and you can just feel all the confidence and that we’re not done yet.”