Grady Rickner can taste the excitement. (Jackie Saia photos)
Sweet and sour.
Thursday night’s varsity boys basketball clash between Coupeville and visiting La Conner offered fans a rare glimpse of a lot of things which have been mostly missing during the pandemic.
Masks were still in place, but the stands were full of (noisy) fans, and the game was a thriller, a throwback to brawls of decades past between two longtime rivals reunited by the Wolves return to the 2B classification.
The final score stings a bit, with the Braves pulling out a 59-57 win on a putback off of an offensive rebound with 2.5 seconds to play.
With the loss, coming in a game Coupeville led for two-and-a-half quarters, the Wolves fall to 2-3 on the season.
They’ll have to have short memories, with an immediate road trip Friday to the wilds of Darrington.
Though, the Wolves may want to remember much of what went down against La Conner, since when they were on, they were really on.
Coupeville came out poppin’ buckets in the first quarter, with four different players scoring during a 15-7 run to open the game.
Logan Martin cracked the seal on the rim with a sweet jumper from the left side, before Grady Rickner knocked down back-to-back buckets.
The first came on a bank shot which quietly kissed the glass as it went down, with a set-up pass right on the money from the wheeling-and-dealing Hawthorne Wolfe.
The second basket was all Rickner, as the lanky junior out-hopped two La Conner players, yanked down a rebound, then put it back up and in before returning to Earth.
Nodding his head in approval at his running mate’s play, Wolfe promptly went off for eight of Coupeville’s next nine points.
He knifed La Conner with a pair of three-balls — the second one coming from deep enough Damian Lillard would have approved — before beating the buzzer on a runner off of a dish from Daniel Olson.
Coupeville’s other point in the opening frame came courtesy a free throw off the fingers of TJ Rickner, who played his strongest game of the season.
Giving up several inches and more than a few pounds to La Conner’s big man in the middle, the elder Rickner brother fought like an uncaged panther in the paint all night.
Even after getting knocked to the floor, TJ bounded back up, shook his head violently to clear the cobwebs, and went right back to work.
TJ Rickner crashes the boards.
His play heralded a strong night for the Wolf support crew, with fellow seniors Sage Downes and Olson coming up with big hustle plays in support of the team’s main wrecking ball, Xavier Murdy.
Hitting their free throws, moving the ball — Wolfe had a bullet of a pass which set X-Man up for a bucket — and hammering away on defense, CHS carried a 26-19 lead into the half.
While the combined score was a bit lower than expected, it was due to the two team’s intensity on defense, not poor shooting.
Unfortunately for Coupeville, the visitors discovered a new weapon during the halftime break.
A Braves team which, on film, seemed to have no three-ball threats, suddenly started draining everything from behind the arc.
Raining down six of its eight treys in the second half, La Conner came all the way back, seizing the lead at 34-33, before stretching the margin to 42-39 by the end of the third quarter.
After losing the lead, Coupeville wouldn’t get it back until the very final moments of the game.
Xavier Murdy and TJ Rickner both crashed the paint hard in the fourth quarter, grabbing rebounds off of missed free throws and putting them back up and in for key buckets.
But things looked grim after La Conner’s final three-ball tumbled through the hoop to lift the Braves to a 56-49 lead.
Then things got frantic.
Wolfe slashed through the middle for a runner, set up a Sage Downes layup off a John Stockton-esque pass, then came back for another runner which froze all five Braves in place as it flipped the net.
Back within a point, Coupeville clamped down on defense, and it paid immediate dividends.
Xavier Murdy made off with a steal at mid-court and hit Grady Rickner in stride for what seemed like it would be a game-busting layup.
It wasn’t to be, though each CHS player on the floor went down swinging both fists at full throttle.
La Conner slid a single, solitary free throw through the net to knot things at 57-57 with 1:13 on the clock, then the defenses were turned to 11.
A Wolfe steal in the waning moments was overturned by a traveling call, before both teams came up with big shutdowns.
With the ball in its hands and a chance to run out the clock’s final 21 seconds before taking an exit shot, Coupeville jumped the gun early, and a try in close was denied.
At the other end, Olson came out of nowhere, flying like a bat out of Hell to poke the ball away at the very last millisecond and save a potential layup.
Daniel Olson, mentally planning to save the day.
That set up an agonizingly intense final seven seconds, with La Conner putting up a shot, missing it, but having a man in the exact right spot to snare the rebound and flip the ball off the glass.
Was he in the exact right spot because he should have been called for three seconds in the key?
Perhaps.
But that is an argument we won’t win, as three refs declined to agree with a mass of wildly-screaming Coupeville fans.
Thanks to high school basketball not using the same rule as the NBA, the Wolves couldn’t advance the ball to half-court with a timeout, forcing their final shot to be a heave from the far end of the floor.
Xavier Murdy got it closer than most would have, but it wasn’t to be, allowing La Conner (and its traveling cheerleader squad) to revel in a win.
The game is one of many in a rivalry which used to rage like wildfire back in earlier decades, and there will be a rematch almost before you realize it, with the teams set to play June 2 in La Conner.
On this night, Wolfe paced all scorers with 22 points, and that burst carries him from #47 to a tie for #43 on the CHS boys career scoring list.
With 526 points and counting, he’s in a (likely temporary) stalemate with Brad Miller, having passed Cody Peters (518), JJ Marti (520), and Gary Faris (524).
Grady Rickner pumped in 11 points in support, with Sage Downes slapping home eight and Xavier Murdy banking in six.
TJ Rickner (3), Olson (3), Martin (2), and Logan Downes (2) also scored, with Alex Murdy bringing the heat on the defensive end of the floor.
Sage Downes had his best offensive performance as a varsity player.
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