The lone senior on the Coupeville boys basketball roster, Dane Lucero, was honored Friday night. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Wins were in short supply Friday, but improvement was the buzz word.
All four Coupeville High School basketball teams in action fell to visiting Cedar Park Christian, and the Wolf varsity boys were no exception.
But like the other CHS squads, the margin of said loss was greatly improved from the first meeting between the schools.
For the varsity boys, their earlier trip to Bothell included a painful 70-27 bushwhacking.
Friday night, the Wolves, who were celebrating Senior Night, made things much, much closer, staying within single digits until late in the fourth quarter in a 52-36 loss.
While the defeat drops Coupeville to 1-7 in North Sound Conference play, 2-13 overall, the Wolves still hold the fifth, and final, playoff berth from the six-team league.
With two regular-season games left — road trips to South Whidbey and Granite Falls next week — CHS trails King’s (9-0) CPC (5-3), South Whidbey (5-3) and Sultan (5-4), but is ahead of Granite (0-8).
Hold on to that advantage and the Wolves are off to the double-elimination district playoffs starting Feb. 4.
If Coupeville and Granite finish in a tie, they would meet Saturday, Feb. 2 on Whidbey to decide the #5 seed. Tip-off for that playoff play-in game would be 5 PM.
Facing off with Cedar Park, the Wolves didn’t play perfectly, but they did play with heart and fire.
Coupeville had too many turnovers, mainly off of passes which it would have liked to take back a split second after firing them, but a couple of nice runs on offense kept it within shouting distance all night long.
The first quarter set things in motion, as Sean Toomey-Stout slammed home a put-back off of a sensational offensive rebound, Coupeville’s lone senior, Dane Lucero, dropped in a sweet lil’ hook shot, and Jered Brown singed the nets for a three-ball.
But those baskets came one at a time, and with some chunks of the clock ticking away between them, allowing CPC to claim a 14-7 lead it would never relinquish.
Wolf frosh Hawthorne Wolfe sank a long trey early in the second quarter, only to have the Eagles hit back-to-back three-balls of their own on the next two trips down the floor.
Down by 12, with the game starting to slip away, Coupeville dug in for one of its two extended runs on offense.
Keyed by Gavin Knoblich, who was everywhere and nowhere at once, cleaning the boards, then using his long arms to reach in and poke balls away, the Wolves closed the half on an 8-3 run.
Almost.
Buckets from Ulrik Wells, Brown, Toomey-Stout, and Knoblich cut the lead to seven and CHS had the momentum heading towards the break.
Unfortunately, Cedar Park exploited a let-down on defense, with its point guard slicing right up the middle, uncontested, for a layup which hit the bottom of the net just as the horn sounded.
The bucket staggered the Wolves, who also came out a bit lethargic to start the third.
Despite a strong power move in the paint for a bucket by Jacobi Pilgrim, and a sensational three-ball by Wolfe, who fired it off his left shoulder while hanging in mid-air, CPC began to pull away.
Up by 15 heading into the fourth, the Eagles met a final burst of resistance from Coupeville, which cut the margin back to nine on a pair of Wells free throws.
Right after that, though, Knoblich fouled out, and without the Energizer bunny-style energy he brought to the floor Friday, CHS finally hit the wall.
While Cedar Park tossed in seven straight points across the final 90 seconds to make the final score a bit skewed, Coupeville coach Brad Sherman could see some positives in how his squad handled the rematch.
“It was a huge improvement for our guys; they battled,” he said. “We had a way better effort on defense and on the boards this time around.
“We had some good looks (on shots), but just couldn’t get them all to fall tonight.”
Brown finished with nine points to pace the Wolves, while Toomey-Stout banked home seven and the duo of Wells and Wolfe chipped in with six apiece.
Pilgrim (4), Lucero (2), and Knoblich (2) also scored, with Mason Grove helping out with scrambling defense and some quality set-up passes.
Perhaps lost in the haze of the game was a historical note, as Wolfe became the highest-scoring freshman boy in 102 years of CHS basketball.
His first three-ball tied him with Mike Bagby at 137 points, and his second one moved this year’s leading varsity scorer to a solid 140.
While Wolfe has passed every other Coupeville boy, there are still four girls ahead of him.
He has a strong chance of catching Megan Smith (161) and Ashley Ellsworth-Bagby (163), but may not have enough games left to make a run at Novi Barron (242) or Brianne King (275).
