Johnathan Thurston (10) blitzed Northshore in the 8th grade JV game, one of two wins on the afternoon for Coupeville Middle School. (Barb Cope photo)
Defensive enforcer Steven Cope (15) and 8th grade coach Bob Martin discuss strategy. (Barb Cope photo)
Sarah Stuurmans unleashed the beasts.
The Coupeville Middle School 7th grade boys’ basketball coach has a varsity squad chock full of super-quick, turnover-causing wild men, and, let loose Wednesday, they ran visiting Northshore right out of the gym. Jumping to a 19-0 lead, the Wolves spread the joy around, with all ten players eventually scoring as they swatted the Gators 53-23.
The win capped a three-and-a-half hour odyssey of middle school hoops, as Coupeville and the visitors from Everett split four games. The 8th grade JV squad used a flawless second quarter to surge to a 17-9 win, the 7th grade JV team dropped a 9-6 defensive struggle and the 8th grade varsity started strong, but ran out of steam in the second half and fell 72-32.
The split came a day after Coupeville dropped all four of its season-opening games on the road at Lakewood.
Wednesday the highlights came fast and furious, especially in the finale. With Luke Merriman, Hunter Downes and Paul Gallahar raining down buckets from the opening tip, the Wolves came out on fire and never really cooled off.
Pushing the pace every chance they had, with Merriman wheeling and dealing and splitting defenders with precision passes to his open teammates, Coupeville kept the Gators on their heels. With Northshore wildly banging away from three-point land — with little success — most of the rebounds were of the long variety, giving the quicksilver Wolves a head start.
In the second half, it turned into a bit more of a defensive struggle, but mohawked Ethan Loy came up big on the boards for the Wolves and medium-sized Joey Lippo put a punctuation mark on things by rejecting a shot by a Northshore kid who measured in at about six-foot-two.
Merriman paced the Wolves with 11 points, while Downes and Gallahar each chipped in with eight. Loy and Nick Etzell popped for six apiece, Lippo and Cameron Toomey Stout had four each and Kyle Rockwell, Ben Olson and Jake Hoagland each knocked in a bucket.
Bob Martin’s 8th grade varsity, which doesn’t have nearly the same amount of playing experience that Stuurmans’ squad brings to the table, stayed close for much of the first half. Clay Reilly hit a sweet tear drop shot over the outstretched arms of two defenders to pull Coupeville within three, at 23-20, right before halftime.
Things took a sour turn from there, unfortunately, as Northshore begin to relentlessly press and picked apart the Wolves. A 38-6 second-half advantage made the game more of a blowout than it had seemed destined to be.
Grey Rische (14 points) and Gabe Wynn (12) paced the Wolf attack, while Reilly swished four and Blake Gallahar netted two to round out the scoring.
The 7th grade JV game threatened to be a scoreless affair, with Northshore clinging to a 1-0 halftime lead. Things picked up a bit in the second half, as Ethan Spark scored four (all on free throws) and JT Quinn netted a layup off of a pass from Spark.
Northshore clinched the game with two crucial steals in the final minute, converting both into breakaway layups.
The epic afternoon of round-ball mania had kicked off with a second quarter to remember for the 8th grade JV squad. Trailing 9-4 after the first seven minutes (with buckets from Loy and Uriel Liquidano), the Wolves played virtually flawless ball in the final quarter, with Johnathan Thurston scoring all eight of his points during a 13-0 run.
Thurston nailed a pair of jumpers, picked the pocket of a Northshore kid and turned it into a bucket and then capped things with a soft runner in the paint. Blake Gallahar added the other five points in the quarter, the final two coming off a nice pass from Liquidano and Wolf big man Steven Cope swatted away three consecutive shots to close the door.
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