Jake Pease helped lead the Wolf JV to a win on the road Saturday. The CHS varsity didn’t fare as well. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
There are two ways to look at this.
If we’re being positive, the Coupeville High School boys basketball squad still controls its own destiny as it chases a playoff berth.
If we’re being negative (some would say realistic), the Wolves window of opportunity has really, really narrowed.
After suffering a 52-39 loss at Klahowya Saturday, brought on by a 12-0 Eagles run to close the third, Coupeville sits firmly in third-place in a league which only sends two squads to the postseason this year.
Klahowya, which started its season 0-6, but has now won 10 of 11, sits atop the Olympic League at 5-1, with Port Townsend (4-2) and Coupeville (3-3) on its tail.
No matter how the rest of the season plays out, Chimacum (0-6) is guaranteed to finish in the cellar.
For Coupeville, it comes down to this — there is no margin for error. Lose next Friday at Port Townsend and the Wolves are eliminated from playoff contention.
Saturday’s game was a killer in many ways.
Coming less than 24 hours after the Wolves held a huge anniversary party to celebrate 101 years of CHS basketball, the Saturday matinee was a late addition to the schedule.
It was plugged-in after a snafu with refs caused an earlier game between the two schools in Coupeville to be postponed.
With the change it also went from being a home game to a road game, and the drive home picked up several extra hours when the Port Townsend ferry was cancelled after everyone headed home was already in line at the dock.
The extra time spent driving, and taking two different ferries to get back to Whidbey gave the Wolves, their coaches and fans plenty of time to reflect on what could have been.
While Coupeville never led Saturday, it stayed almost even with the Eagles until Tim Coots went and ruined a chunk of the weekend.
Klahowya’s senior guard buried a three-pointer from the corner, after stumbling over his own feet, right before the halftime buzzer, turning a one-point Eagle lead into a four-point margin.
That was just the warm-up, however.
Hunter Downes knocked down a pretty little jumper in the paint, off of a dish from Hunter Smith, to pull CHS within 27-25 with 3:30 to go in the third quarter, and the stage was set for a nail-biting finale.
Enter Mr. Coots and exit the Wolves.
Klahowya closed the quarter on a game-busting 12-0 run, with Coots throwing down 10 of his game-high 21 during the run.
I would say the Eagles fans went wild, but KSS has serious trouble attracting patrons to its gym, even with a first-place team running and gunning.
When the road fans outnumber the home team’s student section, and there was a drive and ferry ride involved for the visitors, yikes.
Coupeville tried to get back in the game by going to the long-ball in the fourth, as sophomore gunner Mason Grove dropped in a pair of three-balls and Smith added one of his own.
The closest the Wolves could get was 41-34, and then Klahowya blunted the Coupeville run with a put-back off of a rebound and a trey of its own.
The game had started as a back-and-forth affair, with a couple of ties in the first quarter and a stunning mid-air reverse layup dropped in by a high-flying Smith.
Klahowya exited the first quarter with a 16-9 lead, before the Wolves used a successful run at the charity stripe in the second to cut the lead back to one before Coots huge three-ball.
Kyle Rockwell netted three free throws as CHS went 7-8 at the line in the second, while also yanking down a rebound and firing a bullet to Ethan Spark, who knocked down a trey from the top.
Smith paced Coupeville with 16, and finished the night with 761 points in his stellar career. He passed Hunter Hammer (759) for 14th on the Wolf boys career scoring chart.
Spark netted nine and Grove banked in six, while Rockwell (3), Joey Lippo (2), Downes (2) and Cameron Toomey-Stout (1) also scored.
JV makes it rain:
Avenging an earlier loss to the Eagles, the Wolf young guns rode a 26-point performance from Grove and won 52-43.
The CHS sophomore has 294 points in 15 JV games (a 19.6 average) and needs 54 points in the final four games to pass Allen Black (347 points in 2002-2003), who holds the unofficial Wolf JV single-season scoring record.
After playing a quarter in the varsity game, Grove had three quarters left for the night’s second game, so didn’t start.
Without him on the floor, the Wolves turned to Sage Downes and Koa Davison, who combined for eight points as CHS rolled to a 12-9 lead at the first break.
Downes slapped a running layup off the glass, then netted a three-ball, while Davison hauled in a long outlet pass and turned it into three points the hard way.
Stopping on a dime, he let an Eagle fly by, then shot up and laid the ball in while getting whacked around the shoulders. Tack on the ensuing free throw and Davison was golden.
Grove popped into the game in the second and immediately did some damage, dropping in 12 before the halftime break.
Half of that came off of three-balls, while his other three buckets were set up twice by his own steals and once by a rebound and dish from Gavin Knoblich.
Coupeville kept up the pressure in the third, with Jered Brown opening things with a coast-to-coast romp for a bucket, then closing the quarter with a sensationally-smart play.
Bringing the ball up-court with five ticks to play, he kept one eye on the clock and one on his defender, then peeled off said defender at the last moment and whipped a pass to a lurking Daniel Olson.
The steely-eyed frosh let fly, with the ball departing his fingers a mere moment before the buzzer, and the result was nothing but net, driving a stake through the collective hearts of the Eagles (very small) student fan section.
A late run pulled Klahowya from 12 down to just five at 46-41, but Grove had the antidote, hitting back-to-back three balls to seal the win.
Toss in some creative “old man coughing up phlegm” antics from the Wolf varsity players every time an Eagle went to shoot a free throw (which caused them to clank six freebies in a row), and the game was in the books.
Grove’s 26 was half of his team’s total, with Downes (7), Davison (5), Jean Lund-Olsen (4), Jake Pease (3), Olson (3), Dane Lucero (2) and Brown (2) combining to match his output.
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