Bessie Walstad, seen here shooting a free-throw earlier this season, led the Wolves with eight points Tuesday. (Shelli Trumbull photo)
You know you’re in trouble when the PA announcer can’t even remember where you’re from.
On a night when the woman with the mike in Sultan wanted to believe the Coupeville High School girls’ basketball squad was actually the South Whidbey Falcons, the Wolves struggled to maintain a consistent flow and yet almost overcame a handful of mistakes, a scoreless second quarter and a key botched call late by a ref.
In the end, however, Lauren Escalle’s potential game-tying shot was tipped (after the ref missed Coupeville coach David King’s time-out call and allowed five extra seconds to drain off the clock) and Coupeville fell 30-27 to the Turks.
The loss snapped a two-game winning streak for the Wolves and dropped them to 3-4 overall, 2-2 in Cascade Conference play.
Down by three with 8.7 seconds to play, King tried to get a time-out, but was ignored, allowing the clock to run down to 3.9 seconds before a ref finally acknowledged the coach, who was now at mid-court.
“I mentioned, OK, I had asked for a time out five seconds earlier,” King said. “She told me, well you got your time out. I explained, yes, but I lost five seconds because a ref did not hear or look at the bench.
“No matter,” he added. “I have faith in the girls that they can pull off anything drawn up.”
The final play had Jai’Lysa Hoskins setting a back pick for Escalle, with the senior guard going towards her basket on the wing.
After getting a good inbound pass from Makana Stone, Escalle got in the one dribble she had time for and went up with a nice look at the basket, only to have the Turk defender barely get her hand on the ball, snuffing Coupeville’s chance at overtime.
“We ran it just like we drew it up,” King said. “The defender just happened to recover in time.”
“We did not play our best game, Sultan played hard and made the plays they needed for the win,” he added. “But in the end, we still gave ourselves a chance to get a shot up with less than five seconds to at least tie the score.”
Riding a wave after wins over Lakewood and South Whidbey, the Wolves were on point in the early going. Using a smothering ‘d’, they jumped out to an 8-2 lead after one quarter.
“We talked before the game and a point of emphasis we wanted to establish was the game tempo,” King said. “On defense we wanted to continue like we have all year, pressure man defense. Then on offense we wanted to rebound, get out on the break and run.”
The Wolves took a step back in the second quarter, when their shooting suddenly went ice-cold. With the Turks not exactly burning up the nets themselves, that left a halftime score of 10-8 that more closely resembled a football game than a basketball contest.
Coupeville regained an 18-17 lead entering the fourth, but finally cracked in the final frame, allowing Sultan to put up almost as many points in one eight-minute surge as they had been able to score in the game’s first 24 minutes.
Senior co-captain Bessie Walstad paced the Wolves with eight points, while Stone chipped in with seven points, six boards and two blocks. Amanda Fabrizi and Hailey Hammer both notched four, while Breeanna Messner and Escalle each dropped in a bucket. Messner also hauled in five rebounds.
Coupeville has two non-conference games (Thursday, Dec. 20 at Friday Harbor and Saturday, Dec. 22 at home against Orcas Island) this week, then will have a 10-day gap between games thanks to Christmas break.
The Friday Harbor game will end an unbelievably brutal opening leg for the Wolves, who will have played seven of their first eight games on the road.
Starting with Orcas, they will play four of their next five at home, including big match-ups against Archbishop Thomas Murphy (Wednesday, Jan. 2) and King’s (Tuesday, Jan. 8).
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