“I’m staying down here on the floor where it’s safe!” (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
It was a sweet Valentine’s Day massacre.
Scrappy Northwest Christian out of Lacey hung around for a bit Tuesday night, then the Coupeville High School varsity boys’ basketball team unleashed a tsunami of buckets.
Closing the third quarter on a 23-0 run, and finishing the game itself on a 38-6 tear, the Wolves ran their guests off the floor to a 64-26 tune.
The playoff win lifts Coupeville to 14-7 on the season, a record Brad Sherman’s squad will carry back onto their home floor Thursday, when they play for a second-straight bi-district title and trip to state.
That game, set for a 7 PM tipoff, will be against Northwest 2B/1B League rival La Conner (10-12), which toppled District 2’s top seed, Auburn Adventist Academy, 57-53.
NWC (9-10) and AAA (16-4) also play Thursday in a loser-out game, with the winner advancing to play the title game loser Saturday for the second ticket to state awarded to District 1/2 this time around.
Coupeville, which went 34 years between trips to the state tourney, and 52 between district titles, now stands on the cusp of repeating both major achievements barely a year later.
The Wolf boys’ hoops program has only advanced to the big dance in consecutive seasons once, achieving the feat during the 1974-1975 and 1975-1976 seasons.
Tuesday’s tilt featured one team which was clearly dominant in every way — but had trouble getting the ball to stay in the hoop for the first 18 or so minutes — and one team which refused to go away.
Coupeville got on the board first, with senior Dominic Coffman crashing hard to the hoop to deliver a ball sent his way by Alex Murdy.
Next trip down the floor, same exact play. Murdy–Coffman-bucket.
Tack on a rumble through the paint from Logan Downes and a Murdy free throw, and the Wolves staked themselves to a quick 7-2 lead.
Then the rim turned unforgiving, as Wolf shot after shot found increasingly creative ways of popping back out of the net, allowing Northwest Christian to sneak out to a 12-9 lead at the first break.
The final NWC bucket was a particular dagger, the ball caressing the glass and dropping through the net a millisecond before the shot clock sounded.
But, as Coupeville assistant coach Greg White told the Wolves as they came to the bench, “We’re not out of this! At all!!”
He was right, with the Wolves — sparked by a feisty defense spearheaded by Murdy at his shot-blocking, havoc-creating best — opening the second frame on a 10-0 run.
The first two of those buckets were courtesy fab frosh Chase Anderson, who made off with steals, outran his foe to the rim for a layup, then immediately got right back up in the grill of the man he had just embarrassed.
Murdy, delivering perhaps his best all-around performance of the season, was zipping passes left and right, the ball finding the waiting fingers of Downes and Cole White.
NWC briefly stopped Coupeville’s flow with a three-ball and free throw, but bam, right back at it, with another 7-0 mini-run to send the Wolves to the half up 26-16.
If there was one thing slightly troubling onlookers, it was this — the lead could have already been 20-25 at that point, if the rim had been just a bit more receptive.
But even during the good times of the second quarter, a surprising number of shots refused to go down and came back up.
Sort of like what happened with one overhyped young fan, who discovered yes, you can become a prairie folk hero by barfin’ all over your section of the stands.
“Don’t look behind you. If you didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.”
Coupeville’s inconsistent first half shot making may have given NWC a glimmer of hope, and the visitors actually cut the lead back to 26-20 early in the third quarter.
At which point the Wolves got mad and did something about it.
Slapped, poked, prodded, and whacked upside the head one too many times, Murdy proved he was a lover, and not a fighter.
As in a lover of destroying the souls of anyone in a NWC uniform.
Murdy, eyes boring lasers through the hapless dudes caught in his range of vision, unleashed in the second half.
He scored 14 of his 17 points starting at that 26-20 mark, but the way he did it was especially brutally beautiful.
Instead of simply blocking a shot, Murdy ripped time and space apart as he elevated to punch away the ball right as it left his foe’s hands.
In doing so, he sent the ball on a direct line to Downes, who snatched it up and was off for a breakaway bucket to put salt in the wound.
But the coldest Murdy Moment came on the first play of the fourth quarter, as he ripped a ball free, shot down floor, then suddenly jumped back and rained down a three-ball right in a guy’s face.
The crowd, which included former teammates, went wild, while the Wolf senior had a look on his face which could probably get Netflix to pony up some big cash for him to star in their next serial killer flick.
Once Coupeville went bonkers, it never stopped.
A 23-0 run to close the third quarter, with five different Wolves scoring, blew the lead out to 49-20, with CHS promptly scoring 12 of the first 13 points in the fourth as well.
Hard-working big man Zane Oldenstadt provided the final crowd-pleasers, throwing down back-to-back buckets like he had suddenly been injected with the DNA of Nikola Jokić.
Or Hakeem Olajuwon for true hoops scholars.
A look at the postgame scorebook reveals the kind of share-the-love scoring Brad Sherman enjoys seeing staring back at him.
Three Wolves were in double figures, with eight tallying points.
Downes led the way with 18, followed by Murdy with 17, and White with 10, while Anderson (6), Nick Guay (4), Coffman (4), Oldenstadt (4), and Jonathan Valenzuela (1) all kept Hall of Fame scorekeeper June Mazdra busy.
William Davidson, Jermiah Copeland, Ryan Blouin, and Quinten Simpson-Pilgrim also saw floor time in the win, as Sherman used all 12 players on his postseason roster.
The postgame celebration threatens to get out of hand.
While it was a true team effort, a dedicated stats hound such as me can’t let the moment go without mentioning one milestone.
With his 18 points, Downes becomes just the second Wolf player, boy or girl, to score 500 points in a single season.
The Coupeville junior is at 504 and counting, trailing just Jeff Stone, who rained down a still awe-inspiring 644 back in 1969-1970.
Career-wise, Downes rises to 728, moving past Tom Sahli (719) to claim #20 on the all-time CHS boys scoring chart for a program launched in 1917.
Maybe.
While the 728 for Downes is documented and stamped, Sahli, who faced down NBA legend Elgin Baylor in college, is the only major Wolf hoops star for whom we don’t have a concrete career point total.
Sahli’s 719 is based on his junior and senior seasons, but any numbers from his sophomore campaign in 1951-1952 remain missing — the Holy Grail for my Indiana Jones-style hoops obsession.
So, maybe put a small asterisk next to Downes and the other 19 guys still ahead of him on the chart, in the hope we can one day give Sahli his full due.
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