Logan Martin scored seven points in the final minutes of the fourth quarter Thursday, as Coupeville roared from 12 down to beat Forks 45-44. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Now that is going to be the longest, most tear-stained, really, really morbidly-quiet trip ever taken on a school bus.
When you blow a 12-point lead in the final six minutes, get gut-punched by a ref with impeccable integrity, then lose on the game’s final play, it doesn’t make for a pleasant evening.
So … good thing none of us live in Forks!
Cause the Coupeville side of the stands, the insanely-loud, deliriously-happy side, they exited the CMS gym Thursday flashing smiles, doing fist-bumps and basking in the glow of an early contender for best game of the year.
Even if we are only four days in to 2018.
So, what drove the Wolf fans into hysterics?
Watching the Coupeville Middle School varsity boys basketball squad roar back to shock the visiting Spartans 45-44, literally winning on the final shot of the night — a pressure-packed and artfully-swished little jumper off of the magical finger tips of Xavier Murdy.
The win, coming in Coupeville’s first game since Dec. 14, lifts the varsity to 4-2 on the season and stretches its current winning streak to three games.
It also avenges a loss at Forks a month ago, while being the kind of win they’ll still be talking about long after these players have graduated high school.
The victory also forced an overly-yappy road fan or two to go stone silent at the end (my right ear greatly appreciates that) and made up for a loss in the JV contest.
In that one, the very-green Wolves played a billion times better than they did the first time around against Forks, but still fell 49-20.
Varsity roars:
Coupeville led exactly three times, once at 3-1 on an early Murdy three-ball, and twice in the game’s final 43 seconds.
But hey, the only lead that matters is the one where the clock says 0:00 in the fourth.
Trailing by seven at the half, CMS got as close as four in the third, then seemed to buckle. To which it responded, guess again.
Having surrendered eight straight points — two buckets to end the third and two to start the fourth — the Wolves were in their biggest hole of the night at 38-26.
Then, everything started to click, with the fuse being lit not by a shot, but by a pass.
Out on the run after scooping up a loose ball, Hawthorne Wolfe, the floppy-haired heir to Pistol Pete, who has never met a three-ball attempt he didn’t like trying, passed on a shot.
Instead, he zipped a note-perfect pass to sprinting teammate Caleb Meyer, who snatched the ball out of the air and muscled his way through a pair of defenders for a quick layup.
The pass, and bucket, were huge.
Not only did it break Coupeville’s dry spell, but, in one wham-bam play, it seemed to take most of Forks confidence and toss it in the direction of the very-hungry Wolves.
CMS repeated the same Wolfe-to-Meyer play 10 seconds later, before Meyer dished a gorgeous lob to Murdy for a layup the next time down the floor.
With their lead being scratched away, the Spartans got tight, their shots started to rim out after sweetly falling all night, and Logan Martin stepped up to deliver the KO.
He had been battling hard on the boards all night, but in the final minutes Martin morphed into a dead-eye shooter, knocking down a bank shot in the paint, then scrambling out to the top to drain a trey.
Toss in a Murdy three-ball and a free throw from Meyer, and, as all the blood drained out of the faces of the once-noisy Forks fans, Coupeville was back within 42-41.
Cue an insane final 43 ticks of the clock.
The Wolves struck first, with Martin taking an in-bounds pass from Meyer and turning it into a go-ahead layup, somehow getting the ball to drop while three Spartans beat the crud out of him (without a foul being called).
Forks had the answer, though, when their own big man powered inside for a bucket and foul with 22 seconds to play. Or, at least it seemed that way.
Back up 44-43, the Spartans couldn’t get the free throw to drop.
And then it got bonkers.
Forks snared the rebound, sent a pass out to the right, and a Spartan nailed what could have been a game-icing three-ball.
Except Jim Shulock, a ref with ice water in his veins and great moral integrity, screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO SIR!!!!!!”
Staring down Forks players, coaches and fans as he knifed them, a guy who’s been wearing black and white stripes since before these kids were born, made the only call, in good conscience, he could make.
The only correct one, though one 98.3% of refs would probably not have had the guts to make at that moment.
A Forks player had clearly leveled a Wolf right in front of Shulock, and he punched the air, waving off the trey and calling the offensive foul on the visitors.
The Spartans wailed, while Coupeville simply went to work.
Given the ball back, down by one, with the clock ticking madly away, the Wolves found Murdy on the left side of the paint, and X-Man was flawless.
His short jumper over a sea of arms put CMS up 45-44, then, with the noise in the gym at levels that made Navy jet pilots all the way up in Oak Harbor wince, the Wolf defense sealed the deal.
Forks couldn’t hear, couldn’t think, and couldn’t hold it together, failing to get a shot off in the final eight seconds, sending Wolf fans cascading on to the floor, a sea of humanity losing its collective freakin’ mind.
“Every game should be like this!!!,” bellowed one Wolf coach, Bob Martin, as the other, Dante Mitchell, high-fived their players.
Murdy finished with a game-high 17, while Logan Martin banged home 12. Wolfe netted nine, Meyer knocked in five and Cody Roberts tickled the twines for two.
JV improves:
Coupeville’s younger players managed only six points in 32 minutes the first time these teams faced off, but they had that beat Thursday after just the first quarter.
Gabe Shaw banged down low for the game’s opening bucket, and while the Wolves couldn’t hold the lead against a more-polished Forks unit, they hung tough in the early going.
Alex Murdy was a particular standout, shutting down the Spartans on three consecutive plays down the floor. First he delivered a thunderous blocked shot, before making off with a pair of steals on back-to-back possessions.
Forks used a 9-0 surge to open the second quarter, fueled by a long three-ball, and, after that, the Wolves had few chances to get back in the game.
That didn’t stop CMS, though, as Ty Hamilton had a nice slash through the paint for a bucket and Dominic Coffman reinvented himself as a one-man wrecking crew.
He tossed in five of Coupeville’s seven third-quarter points, including getting three the hard way, but it was his electric intensity on defense which probably scarred the Spartans for life.
Near the end of the third quarter, Coffman stopped a Forks breakaway by delivering a well-timed karate chop to the head of the guy about to drop a layup. Instead the ball went one way, the rival went the other, and Wolf fans erupted.
Going one better, Coffman stopped a second fast break by leveling a Spartan like a semi-truck hitting a grocery cart full of melons left in the middle of the interstate.
On that one, the ref shook his head, tried to hide his smile and softly intoned, “foul, #1, foot to … the mouth.”
When he wasn’t blowing folks up, Coffman dropped in five points to pace the CMS offense. Isaiah Bittner (4), Aiden Burdge (4), Alex Murdy (3), Hamilton (2) and Shaw (2) also chipped in.
Tony Garcia, Kevin Partida, Alex Wasik, Brayden Coatney and Levi Pulliam rounded out the roster.
