Jean Lund-Olsen, celebrating his 18th birthday Saturday, got the game’s biggest cheer when he scored on a breakaway in the fourth quarter. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
One bad quarter crippled the Wolves Saturday afternoon.
But it was how the Coupeville High School varsity boys basketball team bounced back which won the approval of its coach.
While CHS couldn’t fully overcome the effects of a 26-7 deficit at the first break, it did play visiting Nooksack Valley virtually even the rest of the game in a 71-48 loss.
The non-conference defeat sends the Wolves into the winter break with a 3-5 record and a lot of positives.
Having 12 days off between games may enable Coupeville to get back some of its injured and sick players — front court warriors Koa Davison, Gavin Knoblich, and Xavier Murdy sat out Saturday — while fine-tuning its game plan.
When they return, the Wolves travel to Chimacum Jan. 3 for a final non-league tilt, then wade into North Sound Conference play.
Saturday Coupeville opened with a crowd-pleasing play, getting a thunderous blocked shot from mop-topped big man Ulrik Wells in the opening moments.
Then, Nooksack went to work.
With the win on Whidbey, the Pioneers are 6-1 this season, with their only loss to 3A Ferndale, and they showed why, running their offense efficiently while dictating the flow of the game on defense.
Coupeville struggled to score in the opening quarter, with a put-back from Wells its lone basket during an opening 16-2 surge from the visitors.
A Hawthorne Wolfe free throw tossed a pebble in the way of Nooksack’s careening SUV, then a Mason Grove jumper and an inside bucket by Jacobi Pilgrim gave CHS a bit of hope.
With the refs calling everything, and then some, a foul-heavy game had already established a herky-jerky rhythm before the first quarter drug to an end.
Saddled with three quick-fire fouls, some more questionable than others, Sean Toomey-Stout, the beating heart of Coupeville’s defense, ended up handcuffed to the bench for much of the first half.
Grove soon followed him off the court, but, at the very least, the refs were quite content to call a lot of fouls on both teams, so numerous Pioneers also quickly discovered the joy of sitting.
That set up a second quarter which was a brawl, as both teams exchanged scoring plays one after another, with neither squad able to string together consecutive buckets over eight minutes which felt like eight hours.
Grove nailed a three-ball from the left side, while Tucker Hall had the best basket of the frame, slashing hard to the hoop where he found a pass from Wells awaiting him, setting up a wham-bam layup for the hard-working senior role player.
Hall did a little bit of everything in his time on the floor Saturday, twice drawing offensive charges on Pioneers flying in hot and out of control as they neared the hoop.
Actually, it arguably should have been three times, but the one call the refs didn’t give to Hall was the one where he bounced off the back wall after absorbing the blow.
Popping up a bit tenderly, he shook his head and smiled, getting congratulatory pats from his teammates, who all had better vision than the dude in the stripes.
Other than a brief lapse late in the third, when the Wolves took a quick snooze and allowed Nooksack to rip off a 14-0 run in approximately 12.3 seconds, Coupeville played strongly through the final three quarters.
Toomey-Stout, back on the floor, made a sensational airborne, one-handed save on a ball headed for the wall to open the third quarter.
Not only did he prevent a Wolf turnover, but the ever-springy one actually picked up an assist on the play, redirecting the ball right onto the fingertips of a waiting Jacobi Pilgrim, who slapped the rock home.
Even in a losing cause, Coupeville scrapped and fought in the game’s waning minutes, closing things on a 16-6 run.
A three-ball from Wolfe snapped out the bottom of the net, Grove snatched a rebound, slid sideways and netted a jumper on the move, and Jean Lund-Olsen got some birthday love.
The CHS senior, celebrating his 18th birthday, swished a free throw to get into the scoring column, before capping things with a driving layup on a breakaway, bringing the Wolf student section to hysterics.
Wolfe and Grove led the attack, finishing with 13 and 10 points, respectively, while Pilgrim (8), Wells (6), Jered Brown (6), Lund-Olsen (3), and Hall (2) also scored.
Toomey-Stout, pulling down a ton o’ rebounds (when the refs let him rumble) and Daniel Olson rounded out the active roster.
With 13 points Saturday, Wolfe reaches a major personal milestone, cracking the Top 100 on the CHS boys career scoring chart, which stretches back 103 seasons.
The sophomore guard has tallied 285 points in a hair under 1.5 seasons, and now sits #98 all-time.
He passed Alex Evans (272), Zepher Loesch (274), Boom Phomvongkoth (275), Kit Manzanares (275), Terry Roberts (277), Keith Jameson (277), and Mike Mallo (282) Saturday.
Grove, a senior, is making his own run up the chart, and with 249 points, is now #114 all-time.
