Coupeville Sports

   Steven Cope and his Wolf teammates will get a home playoff game next Thursday. (John Fisken photo)

Crisis averted.

The Coupeville High School boys’ basketball squad couldn’t upend league champ Port Townsend Saturday, but thanks to Chimacum knocking off Klahowya, the Wolves are officially playoff-bound.

CHS ran into a hot-shooting RedHawk team in the regular season finale and fell 82-55, dropping to 3-6 in Olympic League play, 3-16 overall.

Port Townsend finished 9-0, 15-4.

If Klahowya had won, there would have been a three-way tie at 3-6, which would have meant a one-night, three-team mini-playoff to decide the league’s #2 and #3 playoff seeds.

That’s not necessary now as Chimacum (4-5, 4-13) and Coupeville are in, while Klahowya (2-7, 4-15) is done.

The Wolves will host the #4 team from the Nisqually League (most likely Bellevue Christian) next Thursday, Feb. 9 in a loser-out district playoff game.

Win that and CHS hits the road Feb. 11 for another loser-out game, that one at the home of the Nisqually’s #2 squad.

To see the playoff bracket, pop over to:

http://www.olympicleague.com/tournament.php?tournament_id=2186&sport=3

Saturday night the Wolves got off to a slow start, trailing 23-9 after one quarter, and never recovered.

Port Townsend shared the scoring load, with four different players hitting for 16 or more and Detrius Kelsall banging home a game-high 23.

The RedHawk junior scorched the nets with six three-balls, propelling his team to a season-best scoring performance on their Senior Night.

Coupeville put together its best offensive performance in the second quarter, when Hunter Smith tossed in 11 of the Wolves 17 points.

He finished with a team-high 21, cresting the 300-point barrier in the third quarter. Smith has 303 points (15.9 a night) heading into the postseason.

Ethan Spark chipped in with 14, eight of those coming in a third-quarter explosion, while Joey Lippo (6), Brian Shank (6), Cameron Toomey-Stout (4) and Gabe Wynn (4) rounded out the scoring attack.

Rough start dooms JV :

The second half belonged to Coupeville, but a terrible first quarter (16-5 in favor of the RedHawks) put the Wolves in too deep a hole to dig out.

The 46-31 loss dropped the young guns final record to 7-12 overall, 2-7 in league play.

Freshman Mason Grove knocked down a trio of three-balls as he went for a team-high 13, while Kyle Rockwell and Jacobi Pacquette-Pilgrim banked home five apiece.

Ulrik Wells (4), Jean Lund-Olsen (2) and Nikolai Lyngra (2) all chipped in.