Wiley Hesselgrave scored 11 of his team-high 16 in the second half Tuesday. (John Fisken photo)
They could have rolled over and given up. It would have been the easy way out.
Plagued by shots that refused to stay in the bucket and inconsistent refs (to say the least), the Coupeville High School boys’ basketball team found itself down by 20 midway through the second quarter Tuesday night.
With big man Nick Streubel chained to the bench by foul trouble and their already slim playoff hopes taking a punch to the gut, the Wolves could have shrugged, taken their beating from host South Whidbey and gone home.
Instead, they rallied behind a rampaging Wiley Hesselgrave and used a pair of big runs to get almost all the way back in the game before finally running out of second chances.
Having cut the lead to five with two minutes to play, Coupeville had their fans on their feet, but couldn’t quite stick the landing.
A run of free throws in the final minute stretched the final score out to 62-51 in favor of the Falcons and all but cemented a playoff berth for South Whidbey.
Coupeville (3-13 overall, 1-10 in Cascade Conference play) trails South Whidbey (4-12, 3-7) by two-and-half games for the league’s second 1A playoff berth behind King’s (15-2, 10-1). The Wolves have three league games left, while the Falcons have four to play.
In a typically chippy Island rivalry game, two Falcons were whistled for technical fouls and Wolf senior Anthony Bergeron was left lying on the floor holding his face after taking a shot to the noggin (on a play where no foul was called … of course).
Into the fray waded Hesselgrave, using his football muscle and ram-the-ball-down-the-opponent’s-throat playing style to his advantage. Attacking the hoop relentlessly, he drained 11 of his team-high 16 points in the second half.
His layup, on a play where he juked a defender out of his high tops, sparked Coupeville’s final run, a 9-3 surge that pulled the Wolves within 54-49.
Streubel, seeing one of the few blocks of floor time the refs let him have, banked in a bucket, then Bergeron slashed through the paint for two. Running on the fast break, junior Joel Walstad suddenly pulled up and swished a three-pointer, and the 20-point lead was whittled away to five.
Unfortunately, that was the exact moment when Coupeville’s shooting woes resurfaced, as shot after shot rimmed out or rolled free of the hoop at the last second over the final 90+ seconds.
It was a return to the way the game had kicked off, as a cold shooting touch doomed the Wolves early.
The final dagger of a 20-8 first quarter was a South Whidbey three-point bomb that settled through the net at the exact same moment the buzzer went off to end play.
Down 30-10 midway through the second, Coupeville staged its first rally, going on an 11-3 run. Bergeron threw down five in the spurt, hitting a hook in the paint, then dropping back to nail a trey on the next play.
He threw down 13 to back up Hesselgrave, while Gavin O’Keefe (6), Walstad (4), Aaron Trumbull (4), Morgan Payne (4), Streubel (2) and Matt Shank (2) also scored.
