Mason Grove pumped in a team-best 20 points Tuesday night, pacing the Coupeville varsity in its battle with South Whidbey. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Well, that was something.
In a game which featured three technical fouls called on a South Whidbey squad which seemed to do an awful lot of whining, the Coupeville High School varsity boys basketball team showed grit and passion Tuesday, but couldn’t overcome a substantial height disadvantage.
The Falcons, who feature four players between 6-foot-7 and 6’4, are a talented team, and they showed it, earning a season sweep of the Wolves with a 76-65 win.
The victory lifts South Whidbey to 6-1 in North Sound Conference play, 14-3 overall, headed into a Friday tango with King’s (6-0, 10-9).
The Knights, whose record is deceptive, as the 1A state title contenders have spent the season playing a ton of 3A and 4A schools, ran the Falcons off the floor the first time they met, crushing them 78-45.
Win Friday to seal a perfect league mark, and King’s will give South Whidbey plenty more to kvetch about.
Coupeville, which sits at 1-6 in league play, 5-11 overall, is in a battle with Sultan (2-5, 4-13) and Granite Falls (1-6, 3-15) for the #4 and #5 playoff seeds from the NSC.
The Wolves welcome Granite to town Friday, then travel to Sultan Feb. 4 for the season finale.
Tuesday’s battle for Whidbey produced some stellar basketball, liberally mixed with some hard fouls, though the technical fouls came not for scrappiness, but for South Whidbey’s apparent love of flapping its gums.
Not to make too much out of things, but we’re 92% into the season, and no collection of players that I’ve seen this year has spent so much time complaining, making faces, whispering sweet nothings at the refs out of the side of their mouths, and losing their cool on what seemed like EVERY SINGLE PLAY.
Big props to Dexter Jokinen, South Whidbey’s senior guard, who played with great intensity, but took calls good and bad in stride, merely nodding his head and quickly moving on to gutting the Wolves.
Maybe it was a one-night thing. Maybe not.
I’ve only see the Falcons play once this season, since I was sick the first time they played Coupeville in Langley, but good lord, if you’re going to make a solid playoff run and represent Whidbey, you all need to suck it up, buttercups.
You crack like this against a scrappy underdog team, you are going to implode when you face a Lynden Christian.
Come on, be like Jokinen. That dude gets it.
Anyways, let the hate mail flow I guess, Falcon faithful. It’s been a hot moment or two since I managed to tick off the South end of the Island.
The game itself, in between the frequent freak-outs, was your usual intense Island rivalry clash.
South Whidbey has talent, and can sting you from multiple directions, whether it’s Sterling Patton raining three-balls or Carson Wrightson roaring through the paint and finishing with a nasty two-handed dunk.
Coupeville responded in the early going with a couple of quick buckets from senior Mason Grove, who nailed his own trey, before slapping home a layup off of a dish from sophomore Xavier Murdy.
After that, X marked the spot, as the now healthy and ready to rumble CHS young gun ripped off his team’s next 10 points.
Showing off his rapidly-developing skill set, Murdy got his points in a variety of ways, hitting from range while also crashing hard to the hoop for three-point plays the hard way.
Tack on a couple of free throws from Jacobi Pilgrim and Jered Brown, then another Grove three-ball, with this one set up by a kick-out from Ulrik Wells, and the Wolves led 21-20 at the first break.
It was a huge change from the first time these teams met, when Coupeville fell behind 14-0 in a hail of turnovers.
CHS continued to fight hard through the second quarter, but the Falcons closed the half on a 9-4 run, stretching a three-point margin out to eight at 43-35.
A little runner in the paint from Hawthorne Wolfe to open the third quarter had thoughts of a comeback in the air, but then South Whidbey asserted its dominance to make things tougher.
Despite missing six consecutive free throws during the run, the Falcons put together a 9-0 surge to put the lead into double-digits for the first time.
Coupeville actually outscored the visitors 28-24 the rest of the way, but the damage was done, as the Wolves were unable to get all the way back.
Coming down the back stretch, they did get a ferocious block from Pilgrim, who caught a Falcon shooter just as he came off the floor, then rejected the ball off the back wall to loud applause from the Wolf student section.
“We put up a great, hard-fought effort against a tough basketball team,” said Coupeville coach Brad Sherman.
“This team really does not ever quit,” he added. “They kept scrapping and stopped several runs when they could have been blown out.”
Grove finished the game with a team-high 20 points, while Nick Young paced the Falcons with 21.
Koa Davison, who played strongly down low in the paint, banged home 11 to match Murdy, with Sean Toomey-Stout (7), Wolfe (5), Wells (4), Gavin Knoblich (4), Brown (2), and Pilgrim (1) also scoring.
Jean Lund-Olsen also saw floor time for CHS.
Coupeville’s top scorers this season, Wolfe and Grove, continue to climb the program’s career scoring chart.
Wolfe, a sophomore, has 371 points as a prep player, and jumped from #67 to #64 all-time Tuesday, passing Ray Harvey (368), Caesar Kortuem (369), and Ty Blouin (369).
His senior teammate scaled six players with his 20-point night, moving from #74 to #68 on a list which covers 103 seasons of CHS hoops action.
Grove sits with 361 career points, having passed former Coupeville greats like Pat Brown and Glenn Losey.
