Jered Brown and Co. fought hard Friday as Coupeville squared off with South Whidbey. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
The rivalry is reborn.
Playing for the memory of a fallen, but not forgotten teammate Friday, the Coupeville High School varsity boys basketball squad put together its best performance of the season.
And while the still-young Wolves couldn’t get past South Whidbey and its rampaging scoring machine, senior gunner Kody Newman, the performance speaks well for the future.
Newman torched the nets for 33, including nine in the final minutes, as the Falcons pulled away late, turning a nine-point fourth-quarter lead into a 64-43 win.
But while the seventh and final star of South Whidbey’s #1 sports family graduates this year, Coupeville can return all of its stars next season.
Leading the way will be Hawthorne Wolfe, a freshman whiz kid who leads CHS in scoring and tossed in 17 more Friday while playing for the memory of his childhood friend.
Coupeville’s Class of 2022, and friends, family and fans came out strong in support of Bennett Boyles.
As part of Coaches vs. Cancer, the Wolves left a seat on their bench open Friday in memory of Boyles, who lost a battle with brain cancer when he was just 12.
Wolfe, who played with Boyles on SWISH basketball teams, wears his friends name on his shoes and put together his most-complete performance of his short high school career in tribute.
CHS raised $483.20 during Friday night’s doubleheader, with the proceeds being donated to Project Violet at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
After hugging Bennett’s mom Lucienne before the opening tip, Wolfe tapped his hand on his shoes as he stepped on the court, then lowered his head and whispered something to himself.
And then he came alive, bouncing and slapping his thigh, before rattling home the first of his three shots from behind the three-point arc, followed by a headlong charge into the South Whidbey defense for another bucket.
Flying down the court, Wolfe pulled in a pass from Jered Brown, switched hands in mid-stride, spun a scrambling defender in a circle, and flipped the ball high off the glass.
As the ball slipped through the twines, pulling Coupeville within 7-5, the biggest crowd of the season roared, with Wolfe and Boyle’s fellow frosh making the loudest noise.
But while the future of CHS basketball was playing at the top of his game, the visiting Falcons had a much-more seasoned pro to answer right back.
With Lewis Pope having graduated, Newman is The Man in Langley, and he hit from every angle, knocking down one three-ball from about a step over the half-court line.
The true killer came on the final play of the first quarter, with South Whidbey clinging to just a 12-10 lead and Coupeville pushing their rivals far harder than some might have expected.
Newman, snatching up a madly-skipping ball, hit turbo speed as he slashed down the sideline, storming right past the CHS student section.
With a small nod, and a bit of a grin, he beat the clock, and the scrambling Wolf defenders, slapping home a layup and picking up a three-point play the hard way, tossing in a free throw to cap a game-changing play.
For a moment, Newman’s derring do seemed to turn the entire flow of the game, and South Whidbey quickly stretched its 15-10 lead after one quarter out to 21-10.
But the Wolves didn’t break this time around.
Wolfe twirled through a maze of bodies for a lil’ dipsy-do bucket, then lobbed home a three-ball, before Gavin Knoblich decided to get into the scoring biz.
Dropping his own trey, and then tapping home a layup off of a sweet entry pass from Sean Toomey-Stout, Knoblich’s 5-0 run pulled the Wolves back to within seven.
Enter Newman again, as he stuck another dagger into his rivals.
This time it was a pass, flicked behind his back to a teammate running to his side, which turned into a gut punch of a Falcon bucket.
While South Whidbey carried a 32-20 lead into the half, the Falcons could never quite pull away until late in the game.
Coupeville banged home a trio of three-balls and got some nice work in the paint from Ulrik Wells and Jacobi Pilgrim and played their rivals to a 17-17 standstill in a third quarter brimming with intensity.
Brown singed the net for a trey of his own to open the fourth, and back within nine, the Wolves looked like a team that might make a run at pulling off an upset.
But Newman has honed the skills of a killer in his four years on the floor for the Falcons, and all the years before that playing against his much-heralded older sisters and brother.
In the crucible of the fourth, the Falcons leader was too much for the Wolves, and he went off for nine points in a closing 15-3 South Whidbey surge.
Record-wise, the two teams are headed in opposite directions.
With the win, South Whidbey is 4-2 in North Sound Conference action, 11-5 overall, and sits in second-place in the six-team league, trailing just King’s (7-0, 13-4).
Meanwhile, Coupeville is 1-5 in league, 2-11 overall, and is battling to hold on to the conference’s fifth, and final, playoff berth.
If the Wolves can replicate how they played Friday, however, anything is possible.
For CHS coach Brad Sherman, the Island rivalry match-up was simply a game well-played, by both teams, and for the right reasons.
“We talked before the game about keeping on theme, playing for Bennett and realizing there is a lot more to life than just basketball,” he said. “We’re honoring someone who went through the fight of his life, and we wanted to play for him.
“I’m really proud of our effort,” Sherman added. “We were scrappier than we have been at any point this season, and we rebounded better than we have all season.
“South Whidbey played well. It was just a good basketball game between two teams out there fighting hard on every play.”
That scrappiness was showcased by Wolfe, who along with his big offensive plays, was a demon on defense.
Four different times a kid listed at 5-foot-7 on the roster forced jumps balls with South Whidbey’s 6’6 big man, including one tussle where he held on to the ball even while being swung two foot into the air.
Wolfe’s 17 points gives him 125 on the season, making him the second highest-scoring freshman boy in 102 years of CHS basketball.
He passes Arik Garthwaite (109), Taylor Ebersole (114), and Mike Criscuola (115), and trails just Mike Bagby (137).
Toomey-Stout rattled the rim for nine points in support of Wolfe, and a fourth-quarter free throw broke a tie between him and older brother Cameron, who graduated last year.
Sean now holds the family scoring title at 81-80, though there’s always the chance sister Maya will return to basketball and come gunnin’ for them both.
Coupeville’s lone senior, Dane Lucero, played aggressively on defense, while Knoblich (5), Wells (4), Brown (3), Mason Grove (3) and Pilgrim (2) also scored.
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