Staff file photo / Preston Byers Crestview’s Addison Rhodes goes up for a layup during a Rebels win vs. LaBrae on Feb. 6 in East Fairfield.

Crestview’s girls basketball program has picked up where it left off last season, which has become something of a trend for the Rebels.

Since the start of the 2022-23 season, Crestview is 75-8 and has yet to win fewer than 21 games in a season. And, while there is still about three-quarters of the 2025-26 season left to play, the Rebels (8-0, 5-0 in the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference Grey Tier) are off to a start that would seem indicative of another 20-plus-win season.

“I feel like our girls are doing a really good job,” Crestview head coach Aaron Blatch said. “I think probably the most exciting thing about the start for me is that I can see how much room to grow we still have. I think we’re far from a finished product.”

That belief is certainly not one that fellow MVAC teams will want to hear, considering how the Rebels have ruled over the conference the past few years.

Crestview’s last loss to a league foe was against Garfield on Jan. 5, 2023; since the 60-49 home defeat to the G-Men, the Rebels have won 43 consecutive games against MVAC Grey opponents, including back-to-back 14-0 runs through the league the last two years.

That degree of dominance, though, has created a large target on Blatch’s team, of which he is well aware.

“Our girls are certainly motivated with the opportunity to win another league championship,” Blatch said. “This senior class, they’ve earned that as freshmen, sophomores, juniors. We also understand that when you’re in that situation, we’re kind of the biggest game on everybody’s schedule at the same time. There’s going to be teams that would love nothing more than to get us.”

One such example is LaBrae, which, like Crestview, has won eight of its first nine games by double digits. The Vikings, with an aggressive, attacking defense, won their first three MVAC games by an average margin of 34 points, not far off from the Rebels’ 44-point margin of victory through their first four league games.

“They’ve got a talented group,” Blatch said of LaBrae. “I’m sure that we’re, if not daily, a weekly talking point in their practices. I know that they would love to get us; we’ve kind of had their number these last few years. So I think it’s just a good reminder for us that we need to be at our best, and we need to be able to bring it every day.”

Whether a team such as LaBrae, which won 19 games last season, is a reminder or not, Blatch said he and his assistants never waste a chance to push their team, even when the scoreboard indicates a blowout.

“As a coaching staff, I think we really just try to reiterate all the time, it’s not us against a specific opponent; it’s us versus the standard that we have. We’re trying to play up to our expectations,” Blatch said. “Our most recent game, we played at Newton Falls (Dec. 8), and I think it was 31-11 or 31-13 at halftime. And you might just look at the score and think, ‘Oh, hey, that’s a pretty good half.’ We were not happy at halftime – at all. Starting with the coaching staff, and I think our girls understood as well that the second quarter against Falls just was below our expectation level. … And we pretty much came to the agreement that, ‘Hey, this isn’t good enough,’ and if the goal is to beat the best teams on our schedule and the best teams that we might encounter in the tournament, that wasn’t going to cut it. So I was really proud of how our girls responded. I think the third quarter was 22-0. In a half where we emptied the bench and got everybody time, we gave up one point in the second half.”

RHODES LEADING THE WAY

So far, Blatch has said that the Rebels’ defense has not been very impressive. The coach said, in particular, that his team’s communication has been lacking, which led to a 90-minute practice entirely consisting of drills working on that aspect of the game.

The offense, though, has been more than enough to mask any perceived defensive woes, thanks in large part to star senior Addison Rhodes. A four-year starter, Rhodes is averaging 32.3 points, 10.5 rebounds, 4.6 assists and 5.1 steals per game as the Rebels’ go-to senior.

“Addison is the most driven, self-motivated person I’ve ever been around,” Blatch said. “So when that’s your best player and when that’s one of your leaders … she holds herself to a ridiculous [standard], and she holds our team, her teammates to a really high expectation and standard as well.

“She has continued to develop as a player and as a person every year. She’s so driven, and she’s so disciplined that I hope she’s enjoying the success that she has earned because there’s never a sense from her, like, ‘Well, I’ve really made it now. I’ve accomplished something.’ She’s always looking ahead to the next thing, the next day, the next workout.”

When asked what makes Crestview, a team LaBrae has lost to 11 straight times, so hard to beat, Vikings head coach Mandy Rowe pointed to No. 3 in black and gold.

“I mean, they have the best player in the area, Addison Rhodes,” Rowe said. “I think figuring out how to stop her this year is probably on the list of every single coach. Still trying to figure out [our] game plan. And they have a nice core of girls around her. So that’s what makes it so tough, is they have other scorers as well.”

Rhodes has received help from the likes of fellow senior leader Ava Bucey, the Rebels’ second-leading scorer and rebounder, in addition to sophomore Brianna Baker, freshman point guard Karli Perry and junior Kerrigan Miller, the latter of whom Blatch remarked was his team’s “unsung hero” to this point in the season.

“She has been in the varsity rotation from her freshman year, but she’s stepping into a little bit more consistent role this year,” Blatch said. “She’s a girl that – I was actually talking to her the other day, I don’t know what her numbers are – if you look at her numbers, there’s not going to be anything that kind of jumps out at you. But I told her, as we get into playing our best competition, the things that she does are going to be more and more and more valuable. She’s done an excellent job defensively. She’s good in the press, she’s good in the halfcourt, she’s made really smart decisions with the ball. She looks like a third-year varsity player out there, so I think she’s been huge for us.”

UNDEFEATED DREAMS

Two years ago, Crestview did not just get off to an undefeated start; the Rebels remained perfect through their regular-season slate, winning all 22 games heading into the playoffs. In the postseason, they then won three games by a combined score of 255-70 before running into another undefeated team, Keystone, which upended Crestview’s perfect season in overtime of the district championship game.

The Rebels’ current seniors were sophomores then, which Blatch said could have helped instill some valuable lessons as they now try to stay unbeaten and, hopefully, end their careers on a much higher note.

“I think that year did kind of teach us about just staying true to the process, kind of focusing on ourselves,” Blatch said. “Obviously, we’re watching film and we’re scouting and we’re game planning, but, I mean, I’ll be honest, and this is a tribute to our kids. We’ve had some really talented kids. Most games we go into, we’re going to kind of do what we do.

“We’re aware of what the other team does, but we don’t want to over-adjust to anybody else when we feel like we’ve got players that can execute in the system and style that work for us. So I do think having the kind of success that our girls have had, and the undefeated regular season there a couple years ago, I think our girls have really just kind of bought into, like, ‘Yeah, that’s nice, but we always have something to prove.'”