William Davidson was a force on defense Monday as the Coupeville Middle School 7th grade basketball squad routed King’s. (Photo courtesy Charlotte Young)
Get hit? Hit back harder.
It’s a philosophy which worked extremely well for the Coupeville Middle School 7th grade boys basketball squad Monday, as the Wolves weathered the best visiting King’s could throw its way, then dropped a devastating hay-maker in return.
Turning a tie game into a blowout, the CMS young guns romped to a season-opening win, kicking off a new season of hoops action in grand style.
While an undermanned 8th grade Wolf squad couldn’t keep the good times rolling, Coupeville will take the split and move on, ready to battle through a 10-game season.
7th grade goes bonkers:
It’s not too often you can go scoreless as a team from the final minute of the first quarter to the opening moments of the third, and win. Much less be on the positive end of a blowout.
And yet that’s just what the young Wolves did as they turned a 10-10 stalemate into a 28-13 victory romp.
The explosion, when it came, was brutally efficient, with the run ‘n gun twins, Logan Downes and Cole White, combining to drop 15 points in a game-deciding 18-0 surge.
For one second, King’s looked good. But it was a very short second.
The Knights point guard used a roll to the rim to bank home a runner on the first possession of the third quarter, capping a comeback from an early 7-0 deficit.
Knotting the game at 10, the bucket stretched Coupeville’s scoreless streak to nine-plus minutes, a time when decent CMS shots found a million ways to refuse to go down.
It would have been easy for the fairly-green Wolves to break under pressure, but early signs point to this bunch being a resilient group.
Without blinking, Downes hauled in a pass, flicked a trey through the bottom of the net, then immediately turned and sprinted back down court.
That shot, and Coupeville’s dynamic defense over the remainder of the third quarter, caused King’s to fracture.
With White, Downes, Ryan Blouin and Nick Guay relentlessly harassing the Knight ball-handlers, turnovers began to happen at a rapid rate.
When the ball did hit the rim, Zane Oldenstadt, William Davidson and Mike Robinett cleaned the glass ferociously, kick-starting Wolf fast-breaks. And once the points started falling, they arrived in a tsunami.
White knifed through a pair of defenders to slap home a layup off of a steal, then Downes pulled off almost a mirror image play.
Not content to stop with two-point buckets, the duo hit back-to-back three-balls, with White torching the net from the left side, before Downes rained down sweet pain from the far right corner.
After scoring the opening bucket of the third, King’s went scoreless for 10+ minutes.
Facing a withering Wolf D, the Knights didn’t put points on the board again until there were less than three minutes left in the game.
By that point, Oldenstadt had muscled his way in for a bucket in the paint to kick off the fourth quarter, stretching the lead all the way out to 28-10.
The frantic finish matched Coupeville’s sizzling start, when the Wolves rode a pair of buckets from Blouin and a long three-pointer from Downes — set-up by a Guay steal — out to a 7-0 lead.
Davidson added a free throw, after spending much of the first quarter diving on the floor in pursuit of loose balls, then Downes slapped home a breakaway layup to stake the Wolves to a 10-5 lead at the first break
The second quarter was surprisingly low-scoring, with a King’s three ball at the 1:47 mark the only change to the scoreboard.
In the end, it didn’t matter, as Coupeville’s explosive offense and barbed defense proved too much for the Knights.
“The defensive effort and rebounding were impressive from the whole team,” CMS coach Greg White said. “There was a lot of promising play from our boys and great support from the fans.”
Downes paced the Wolves, and outscored King’s by himself, with a game-high 15.
White banked home five, Blouin knocked down four, Oldenstadt banged inside for three and Davidson’s free throw put the final exclamation point on the scoring chart.
Robinett and Guay were joined by Quinten Pilgrim and Timothy Nitta in providing able support for Greg White and assistant coaches Michael Davidson and Arik Garthwaite.
8th grade learns under fire:
King’s older squad, while not equal to some of the juggernauts the private school has brought to town in the past, was still explosive enough to run away with a 50-20 win.
Mixing strong work on the boards with a dagger from three-point land, the Knights scored the first 13 points of the game, putting the Wolves on their heel.
Coupeville finally got on the board when Alex Murdy slashed the back-pedaling defense for a running layup, but that was all he and his team could eke out in a rough first quarter.
Trailing 19-2 headed into the second, the Wolves stayed much closer after they found their offensive rhythm.
Murdy banked home a team-high 11 points, adding three in the second and another six in the third.
The prettiest play from the nephew of former Wolf scoring ace Allen Black arrived early in the second quarter, when Murdy pump-faked a defender out of his high tops, then spun to the hoop for a swooping lay-in.
Dominic Coffman added five points to the CMS cause, including dropping a long three-ball from a step or two outside the parking lot, while Ty Hamilton tickled the twines for a pair of buckets to round out the scoring.
Levi Pulliam, Kevin Partida, Josh Upchurch, Alex Wasik, Jesse Wooten and James Hall also saw floor time for Wolf coach Dante Mitchell and assistants Mikayla Elfrank and DeAndre Mitchell.
Support crew soars:
Opening nights are sometimes rough, but Coupeville’s trio on the scorer’s table — score-book sage Nicole Laxton, clock operator Ema Smith and Head of Security Ashley Menges — were flawless in the spotlight.
Well, 99% flawless.
There was one preening lil’ punk of a King’s 8th grader who needed someone to reach over and slap the top-knot off of his frequently-annoying head.
But, alas, today’s high schoolers continually prove themselves to be more polite than the ones I grew up with, so, in 2018, not all of my day-dreams get to come true…
On the other hand, I did get free potato chips from the young children of Allen and Mandi (Murdy) Black and free chocolate from Charlotte Young, so I had that going for me, which was nice.
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