LEAVITTSBURG — For the first time in school history, the Crestview Rebels finished the regular season undefeated at 22-0 after beating LaBrae 64-33 in Leavittsburg on Monday.

“It’s special,” Crestview coach Aaron Blatch said. “This is my seventh year here. I’m only the fourth coach in the history of the program. The three that came before me all had tremendous success.

“Crestview has a lot of great basketball tradition. There’s been a lot of great teams and great players. To do something that has never been done here is special. These girls, and the girls that played here before them, put in a lot of work to get us to this point.”

The Vikings were keeping it close midway through the second quarter. Ella Kuszmaul (team-high 11 points) had a reverse layup, and Marissa Levensky cleaned one up underneath the basket.

However, Addison Rhodes (game-high 27 points) took it to the hoop and Crestview was up 28-18 at halftime.

Then, the Rebels went on a 9-0 run to start the third quarter, thanks to a three-pointer from senior Emily Downey, and a steal and a layup from Rhodes.

“Everyone on the team worked hard to get this,” Rhodes said. “It feels good. It’s never been done here before. We can work even harder. We can make a deep run in the playoffs.”

The Rebels will have to wait over two weeks until their next game in the playoffs on Feb. 21.

“I thought LaBrae played a tremendous first half,” Blatch said. “We were able to get a little bit of a lead at halftime. We kind of blitzed them a little bit in the third quarter with some pressure.

“Now, we’re off for 16 days. We definitely wanted to play well in this one. We have plenty of things to work on. We can use the time off to make sure we’re a little bit better defensively. We’re focused on that first game.”

Myer Miller and Angel Scruggs battled for a loose ball. Riley Rowe ripped down a rebound and nailed one from downtown. Kerrigan Miller scored inside, and Crestview led 49-28 heading to the fourth.

Crestview junior Luvrain Gaskins (18 points) was too much of a force in the paint for LaBrae to contend with as the game wore on.

“It’s a great thing to go through the regular season undefeated,” Gaskins said. “We have a lot of confidence in our ability to get better. We were confident, but we didn’t know we could do this for sure. We lost a couple of close games last year. This means a lot.”

The Vikings (16-4) still have two more regular season games left before they begin the postseason.

“Crestview is a great team,” LaBrae coach Mandy Rowe said. “They have a great inside-outside game. They can shoot and penetrate. Gaskins is so solid on the inside. We struggled to keep her off the boards. Rhodes is a dominant player. Downey hit a couple of three-pointers.

“We’ll host Norwayne in our first tournament game after we finish up the regular season. It should be a competitive game. We’re going to keep working hard in practice.”