Four-year varsity player Gabe Wynn shares a final moment with CHS coaches Anthony Smith (left) and Dustin Van Velkinburgh. (Robyn Myers photo)
Wins and losses don’t tell the whole story of this year’s Coupeville High School boys basketball squad.
While they had too few of the former and too many of the latter, finishing 3-17 after being bounced out of the playoffs Thursday by visiting Bellevue Christian, Wolf head coach Anthony Smith was upbeat post-game.
“We had a very good year,” he said. “Maybe not with the wins, but we became a really tight team this year, through our team dinners and bonding, varsity and JV included.”
The closeness was on display as the undermanned Wolves fought their highly-favored foes to a first-half standstill, before the shortness of their bench cost them in a 66-54 season-ending loss.
Bellevue Christian (10-11) advances to play Cascade Christian in another loser-out district playoff game Saturday.
Coupeville, which loses three seniors (Gabe Wynn, Steven Cope and Brian Shank), went just seven deep until the final moments of the game, and that lack of fresh bodies finally caught up to them in the third quarter.
Trailing just 27-26 at the half, after BC converted an offensive rebound into a go-ahead bucket with 1.2 seconds to play, the Wolves fell a step or two behind the deeper Vikings in the third quarter.
After putting together a 9-0 run at one point in the second, CHS failed to generate back-to-back buckets at any point in the third, and took a 22-13 hit in the quarter.
Junior shooting guard Hunter Smith, who had to play most of the second half with a large bandage on his cheek after a defender drew blood, did his best to keep his team alive, dropping baskets from all angles.
Rampaging from coast to coast, skidding through traffic, then banking home the ball at the last second, or rising above the crowd to tickle the twines on sweet jumpers, he knocked down 17 of his game high 29 in the second half.
It wasn’t enough, though, as Bellevue never lost the lead in the second half — after trailing by as much as five in the first — and steadily stretched the margin out.
They got it as far as 15 midway through the fourth, before Coupeville responded with an 8-2 run.
Three of those buckets came from Smith, while the other was a layup from Joey Lippo set-up by a drive-and-dish from Smith.
Back within 60-51, but with the clock too far gone for a full comeback, the Wolves had to foul and were promptly stung.
Bellevue, which was only hitting 50% of its shots at the charity stripe up to that point, knocked down six straight freebies in the game’s final 4.5 seconds.
The middle two came courtesy of a technical foul on CHS after a mix-up on uniform numbers.
The season’s final play was magnificent, however, as Lippo took the in-bounds pass, took a quick dribble or two and promptly swished a three-ball from behind the half-court line as the final buzzer sounded.
That final shot was a worthy finish to a game that looked like it would be a barn-burner in the first 16 minutes.
Coupeville broke the ice first, with Wynn hitting a runner in the paint after Shank saved a rebound an inch from the end-line, then smartly kicked it back to his coming-in-hot captain.
The two teams exchanged hay-makers, with the Wolves scoring their final five points in the quarter off of two highlight reel plays.
On the first, CHS had the ball out of bounds with just two ticks on the shot clock, only to shock the Vikings when Lippo threaded a pass to Smith, who knocked down a trey as the buzzer blared.
On the second, Ethan Spark corralled a loose ball in the corner, then spun and dropped a floor-length pass into Shank’s waiting hands for a running layup that knotted things at 9-9 at the first break.
The second quarter was an exchange of mini-runs, with Bellevue surging to a four-point lead before Coupeville mounted its best stretch of the evening.
Wynn snatched a rebound and took it the length of the court for a bucket, kicking off a 9-0 run that staked the Wolves to their biggest lead of the game at 22-17.
After Smith pulled off a three-point play the hard way (breakaway basket off a steal coupled with a free throw), he added a reverse layup on the move, then Cope capped things with a pair of free-throws.
The half ended with the schools staring each other down.
Spark put on a little shake’ n bake show, before popping a tough jumper in the paint to put the Wolves up 26-25, then BC got dramatic on the ensuing trip down the floor.
The Vikings missed a shot in the paint, but one of their players managed to split two Wolves to snatch the board and put it back up and in under extreme duress.
While the first half played out better than the second for his squad, Anthony Smith was pleased with the effort his guys gave him all game.
“They played hard and battled till the last second,” he said. “That’s been the MO of my teams — we fight and when most other teams leave this gym, they’re beat down and frustrated.
“I’m proud of my guys.”
Hunter Smith’s 29 points gave him 332 for the season, leaving him with a crisp 16.6 average.
Wynn, a four-year varsity player for Coupeville, finished with eight points, while Shank (6), Lippo (5) Spark (4) and Cope (2) rounded out the scorers.
Cameron Toomey-Stout bedeviled the Vikings on defense, with Kyle Rockwell, Ariah Bepler and Hunter Downes, making his first appearance since injuring his hand several games back, all seeing floor time in the late going.
Final varsity scoring stats:
Hunter Smith – 332
Gabe Wynn – 205
Ethan Spark – 136
Brian Shank – 125
Hunter Downes – 36
Joey Lippo – 33
Cameron Toomey-Stout – 26
Steven Cope – 15
Ariah Bepler – 5
Jered Brown – 5
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