Retracing Lacie and Lexie Hull's Spokane high school basketball rise: They were, indeed, double the trouble

All the Hull sisters do is collect basketball championships.

They won them at all levels at Central Valley High School in Spokane - in league (three), state (two) and even a Geico national title in 2018.

And at Stanford? They've won two Pacific-12 Conference titles, three conference tournament championships and, of course, the NCAA Division I women's national title last season.

If the statistics came with it, so be it. But that wasn't their primary aim.

"I thought they were one person," said Scott Bullock, the girls coach at Woodinville High School who faced the Hull twins in their final in-state game - the Class 4A championship. "Both of them are very good."

As the 6-foot-1 Hull sisters and Stanford get ready for the Final Four starting Friday in Minneapolis, three coaches from their home state, including Rehkow, reflected on their most memorable moments involving the twins' emergence:

'FELT LIKE THEY WERE EVERYWHERE'

The rumor tremors started in middle school.

At the time, Gabe Medrano was the girls coach at North Central. That is where he started hearing about these two sisters doing extraordinary things.

"You hear the stories," Medrano said, "And it's like, 'We'll see.'"

Before Medrano left to become the current girls coach at Lewis and Clark High School, he moonlighted as a track assistant at Central Valley in the spring of 2015.

That is when he got to study the Hull twins up close. He was their jumps coach.

"Awesome kids, and the nicest kids ever," Medrano said. "Every day, after we got done from practice, they would come over and say, 'Thank you!'"

For the next three seasons, Medrano had to figure out a way to stop them on the basketball court in Greater Spokane League play.

Fat chance. The Bears went 83-1 during the Hull sisters' final three seasons (2015-18).

"They were just so fast," Medrano said. "I had some really good talent, but it felt like they were everywhere.

"We played them three times (during their senior year), and the last time was in the district championship. I thought we had a good game plan - to limit them in transition and not turn the ball over

"The first quarter, it worked. And it was like they said, 'Nah, we will match up with you with straight pressure ... and then took over. They just impacted the game in every aspect."

'THEY WERE COLLEGE PLAYERS PLAYING IN HIGH SCHOOL'

At the time of the Bears' national title run in 2017-18, the largest-school classification (4A) landscape in Washington was full of talent-laden state hopefuls.

Moses Lake, led by point guard Jamie Loera was also undefeated heading into the state tournament. Nobody featured a more physical frontcourt than Kentridge, led by Pac-12-bound forwards Jaquaya Miller and Jordyn Jenkins. And Bellarmine Prep - the lone team to hand the Bears a loss during their long run - still lurked with Shalyse Smith.

But the next-up group that season was Woodinville, a fearless, up-tempo team led by ninth-grader Mia Hughes.

Bullock and former Central Valley girls coach Freddie Rehkow were close friends, which was a reason the Falcons decided to play in the Bears' winter holiday tournament in Spokane.

The two teams met. Central Valley won, 67-50. But the 50 points Woodinville scored were the most the Bears gave up in state all season.

"It was close in the first half. We even had a lead, but they took it away," Bullock said. "It wasn't a bad game. We had a little hope."

A little more than two months later, the two schools met for a rematch in the Class 4A championship game in the Tacoma Dome.

"Having faced them before, and playing pretty well, that gave us a little bit of confidence early in the year," Bullock said. "But clearly they were that much better."

Behind 27 turnovers, the Bears won, 70-39.

Lacie Hull had 19 points and 10 rebounds while Lexie Hull - the tournament MVP - added 13 points and six rebounds.

"Lexie always had the better numbers, but on the floor, you could never tell them apart because they were even in skill level," Bullock said.

"They were college players playing in high school."

'THOSE HULLS ARE SO FUN TO WATCH'

After 21 seasons coaching girls basketball, Rehkow stepped down after the 2018 season. He is now currently the boys coach at first-year Ridgeline High School.

But last weekend, Rehkow was asked to volunteer at the NCAA women's Spokane Regional tournament.

And Rehkow was given a plum assignment as the Stanford women's locker-room concierge where he got to hang out with his two former All-American standouts.

"It was cool to be around them," Rehkow said. "I did not get to talk to them a whole lot. But after their games, I told them, 'Congratulations,' and how proud I was of them, and wished them the best. It was such a proud moment as their former coach.

"I was also getting a lot of text messages that said, 'Man, those Hulls are so fun to watch.'"

Rehkow saw flashes from the Hull sisters in high school during their ninth-grade seasons, but became fully convinced they were bound for all-time greatness a year later.

"That is when I felt we had something special," Rehkow said. "That is also when we started getting all these comments from other coaches of, 'We've got to deal with these girls for three more years?'

"When you see them flying around, deflecting passes and diving on the floor, there was no coach out there that could say they weren't the two hardest-working kids on the floor."

Lexie left as not only the school's all-time leading scorer (1,883 points), she was a two-time state Gatorade player of the year.

Lacie was a three-time all-GSL performer who was named the 4A state player of the year by the Washington State Girls' Basketball Coaches Association (Lexie was 'Miss Basketball' for Washington in 2018).

"I love those kids," Rehkow said. "They keep representing Spokane, Central Valley and the state of Washington."

(Teaser photo courtesy of Stanford athletics)