The power of the man bun compels you. Risen Johnson scored five of his team-high 15 in the fourth quarter Saturday. (John Fisken photo)
The answer was loud and clear.
After a three-game stretch in which the Coupeville High School boys’ basketball squad struggled, Wolf coaches challenged their players.
To unite as a team. To buy into their roles. To commit to each other. To get back to how they had opened the season.
Saturday, the players responded, and they did so as one.
It wasn’t just that they won, holding off visiting Mount Vernon Christian in a 69-68 non-conference thriller.
That was big, yes, and it brought Coupeville back to 5-6 on the season.
But more than merely winning, it was how they won. As a true team.
“Everybody stepped up, and everybody stepped up when we needed them to,” said Coupeville coach Anthony Smith. “We found a way to win, a way to get back to how we were before.”
The Wolves could have fractured on this night, and badly.
Up 53-45 after JJ Johnson swooped to the hoop for a bucket to open the fourth, Coupeville hit its only rough stretch of the night.
Taking advantage, the Hurricanes reeled off 10 straight, with a pair of three-balls which were true daggers, as one came off of an in-bounds play and another on a really long rebound that skittered right through the hands of several Wolves.
Suddenly trailing by two, CHS needed a big emotional burst and it got it thanks to teamwork.
Wiley Hesselgrave, who fought like a savage yet had a grin on his face most of the night, came up with a loose ball, spun and dropped the ball into the hands of a flying Dante Mitchell.
Without a trace of hesitation, the lanky senior put the ball on the floor once, snatched it back and shot past his defender for a running layup.
Cue an explosion of joy which ripped through the pro-Wolf crowd and a fist pump of approval from Hesselgrave.
That knotted the game at 55, while setting up an absolute war that played out over the final three-and-a-half minutes.
The two teams exchanged buckets like heavyweight boxers standing in the middle of the ring, slugging it out, daring the other guy to back down, but secretly happy when they didn’t.
A thunderous right — Hesselgrave tearing a rebound out of a Hurricane’s hands and drilling a jumper while three guys landed on top of him.
Then a series of jabs to the spleen —Risen Johnson spinning down the baseline, shedding defenders on his way to three points the hard way; Jordan Ford banking in a bucket off of a bullet pass from Risen Johnson that slid and curved through a maze of rival arms.
Each time Mount Vernon responded with their own nerves-of-steel play, until Coupeville finally broke its will.
Trailing 66-65 with 1:04 to go, the Wolves got a pair of free throws from Hunter Smith to snatch back the lead, then held the Hurricanes scoreless for 62 of the final 64 seconds.
Risen Johnson worked an absolutely textbook give-and-go with Hesselgrave, getting the ball back and hitting a runner while laying the ball up backwards over his head to put CHS up by three.
The Hurricanes went for the tie, missed and got a reprieve when a ref called Risen Johnson for traveling after he leapt, snatched the rebound, but inadvertently rolled over a body coming back down to Earth.
The next trey missed as well, though, and while a Hurricane slipped through to put the rebound back up and in, the clock ran out on the visitors.
Taking the ball out of the net with 1.9 seconds to go and the clock running, Ford alertly never in-bounded the ball, squeezing it to his chest as his teammates celebrated.
The late theatrics capped a game that was smartly played by both teams, a scrappy affair where Coupeville survived MVC runs by getting big-time shots at just the right moments.
Risen Johnson had the play of the first half, in which he stole the ball and zipped in for a layup, making not one, but two, different Hurricanes crash to the floor on the play.
Still, the Wolves trailed 28-21, until they turned it around with a 14-3 run to close out the half.
Mitchell and Gabe Wynn each knocked down a bucket and free throw during the run, but it was long-range gunner JJ Johnson who made the crowd swoon.
The Wolf senior nailed a trey from the right side with 20 seconds to play, then raised the ante by nailing another one with less than a single tick on the clock, backpedaling with a grin as his large fan section lost its ever-loving mind a few feet away.
Coupeville wasn’t done with the crowd-pleasers, hitting three treys in the third, including an even longer one from JJ Johnson.
The final one was the most unexpected, as Ford, far from the paint he normally patrols, rolled out, took a pinpoint pass from Hesselgrave and dropped his own three-ball from the deep, dark corner on the right side.
As the ball started to settle through the twine, the third quarter clock read 0:00, one more time in which the Wolves pulled off perfection thanks to note-perfect team play.
The commitment to getting something from everyone carried over to the scoring totals, where eight of Coupeville’s 11 players scored, with four notching double digits.
Risen Johnson led the way with 15, while Ford banged home 12 and Hesselgrave and JJ Johnson each added 11.
Smith dropped in seven, Wynn popped for six, Dante Mitchell went for five, Ryan Griggs added a bucket and Desmond Bell, DeAndre Mitchell and Jared Helmstadter all chipped in with strong work on the defensive end.
Coupeville is now off for six days, returning to action with a home non-conference game against Stevenson Friday, Jan. 15. That game (varsity only) tips at 5 PM.
