Risen Johnson did what he could Tuesday, scoring 16 points in a tough loss. (John Fisken photo)
There are bad nights, and then there are nights where you walk away and say, “Nope, never gonna watch the tape of this one ever again.”
Trapped in a perfect storm Tuesday night, the Coupeville High School boys’ basketball squad went down hard.
And while the 80-36 loss to visiting Port Townsend doesn’t erase their playoff berth — that’s already locked into place — it did give their coach cause for concern.
After a long pause, Anthony Smith merely shook his head and declared that no, he didn’t have a single positive thing to say about what he had just witnessed.
Now 8-9 overall, 3-4 in league play, the Wolves sit in third-place in the 1A Olympic League, two games behind Chimacum (5-2) and three back of Port Townsend (6-1) with two left to play.
Coupeville travels to Chimacum Thursday, then closes the regular season Saturday at Klahowya (0-7).
If the Wolves recover and sweep both, while the Cowboys also lose their finale against Port Townsend, Coupeville will finish tied with Chimacum, but take the league’s #2 seed based on a head-to-head tiebreaker.
That would give them a loser-out home playoff game Feb. 13. Win and they advance to the double-elimination portion of districts.
Otherwise, they will be the #3 seed, host a postseason tilt Feb. 11 and have to win back-to-back loser-out games to get to double elimination.
Playing on Senior Night, the Wolves could not catch a break Tuesday night.
Port Townsend played about as flawlessly as humanly possible, running play after play to perfection. They shot extremely well, especially from long-range, but also got every roll and bounce possible.
By the third or fourth time the RedHawks banked home a miracle shot, you knew this was not going to be a night Wolf faithful would remember with great glee.
Coupeville, on the other hand, kicked off the game with back-to-back turnovers and never settled down.
When the Wolves did get anything going, they couldn’t get a basket to drop no matter what angle they came from.
Balls popped back out, took odd bounces off the rim or broke the laws of physics every time CHS got an attempt in the air.
Two free throws from Risen Johnson and an emphatic blocked shot by Dante Mitchell actually staked Coupeville to a 2-0 lead, but things immediately took a bad u-turn.
Port Townsend rolled off 14 straight points before DeAndre Mitchell took a rebound back up for the first Wolf bucket of the evening.
From there, the RedHawks stretched the lead out to 17 at the half (31-14), then got really good, and really lucky, in a wild third quarter.
Raining down 33 points over an eight-minute stretch, Port Townsend hit four three-balls in the third, and missed a fifth by just a sliver.
That shot, however, still went in, as the RedHawk shooting it from a millimeter inside the line somehow got the ball to drop while being gang-tackled by a pair of Wolves.
He then bounced to his feet, a bit unsteadily maybe, and sank the ensuing free-throw to get three the hard way.
Coupeville actually put up its best offensive show in the third, with Johnson zipping to and fro for 12 of his squad’s 18 in the quarter.
But, when you have your best run and still get outscored by 15 in the quarter, there’s a strong chance you’re not going to win.
The Wolves went without a field goal in the fourth — they had only four during the first, second and fourth quarters combined — getting four free-throws from Jared Helmstadter.
Seniors Beauman Davis and Andre Avila made their varsity debuts in the fourth, with Avila, the smallest guy on the court, soaring between the redwoods to snag a rebound.
Johnson paced Coupeville with 16, while Jordan Ford banged down five.
Wiley Hesselgrave (4), Helmstadter (4), Hunter Smith (3), DeAndre Mitchell (2) and Desmond Bell (2) also scored.
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