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Posts Tagged ‘Hunter Smith’

Despain! Despain! No Fantasy Island for CHS boys!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, tagged , , , , , on February 2, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Ethan Spark (John Fisken photos)

   Ethan Spark, seen in an earlier game, torched the nets for 12 Thursday in Sequim. (John Fisken photo)

The rain in Spain may stay mainly in the plain, but the shots off of Nate Despain’s fingers fell mainly right through the middle of the net.

With their sophomore gunner dropping 17 of his game-high 19 in the first half, outscoring visiting Coupeville by himself, the Sequim High School boys’ basketball squad rolled to a 56-40 win Thursday night.

The non-conference loss, the second in a four-day period to the 2A school, leaves CHS at 3-15 heading into its regular season finale.

That’s when things will get interesting for the Wolves.

Coupeville sits at 3-5 in 1A Olympic League play, in a tie with Chimacum, a game up on Klahowya (2-6) and well back of league champ Port Townsend (8-0), who they will visit Saturday for a 6 PM game.

All the possibilities:

*Coupeville wins, Chimacum beats Klahowya = Wolves finish in a tie with Chimacum, Cowboys own tiebreaker and are #2 seed, Wolves #3 seed in playoffs, Klahowya out.

*Coupeville wins, Klahowya beats Chimacum = Wolves #2 playoff seed, Klahowya and Chimacum tied, Eagles own tiebreaker, are #3 seed, Chimacum out.

*Coupeville loses, Chimacum beats Klahowya = Chimacum #2, Coupeville #3, Klahowya out.

*Coupeville loses, Klahowya beats Chimacum = Bring on the crazy.

In that final scenario, all three teams tie at 3-6, and all own a tiebreaker on one of the two other teams.

If that happens, the three squads travel to Port Townsend Tuesday, Feb. 7 for a battle royale that starts at 6 PM.

Chimacum would have a first-round bye, thanks to a coin flip, while Coupeville and Klahowya would play a half game (two eight-minute quarters).

Loser exits stage right and is done for season, while winner then faces Chimacum in another 16-minute game to decide the #2 and #3 playoff seeds.

Got all that? We’ll be back on Saturday with an update.

Thursday night offered Coupeville a chance to get some revenge on Sequim after taking a 72-33 beating three nights earlier.

And, while they couldn’t fully turn the tables, the Wolves did make things closer.

The primary problem was they didn’t get fully rolling until the second half, falling behind 17-7 after one quarter and 29-14 at the half.

After the break, CHS did finally corral Despain, limiting him to just a single second-half bucket, but the damage was done.

Coupeville got stronger as the game played out, scoring 12 points in the third before winning the fourth 14-10.

Wolf junior Hunter Smith poured in nine points in the final quarter, on three treys, as he notched 13 of his team-best 15 in the second half.

Ethan Spark added 12, including another trio of three-balls, while Gabe Wynn knocked down seven.

Joey Lippo (2), Brian Shank (2) and Cameron Toomey-Stout (2) rounded out the attack, while Ariah Bepler, Kyle Rockwell and Steven Cope all saw floor time.

Coupeville hit seven three-point bombs, bettering Sequim, while also hitting 7 of 10 free throws.

Sequim was deadly at the charity stripe themselves, netting 12 of 13.

JV loses:

Playing without a point guard after freshman Jered Brown’s recent broken collarbone, the Wolf young guns dropped their game to fall to 7-11 on the season.

No other info was available.

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Not the result we were hoping for…

Posted in Boys Basketball, tagged , , , , on January 30, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Steven Cope goes up strong Monday night. (John Fisken photo)

Wolf senior Steven Cope goes up strong Monday night. (John Fisken photo)

The night started off strong and then it kind of went downhill, fast.

Senior Night festivities, honoring Gabe Wynn, Steven Cope and Brian Shank, helped the Coupeville High School boys’ basketball squad kick things off on a classy note Monday night.

Unfortunately, the game itself, a non-conference tilt with 2A Sequim, became a one-sided affair quickly, as the host Wolves fell behind by 20+ points early in the second quarter and never recovered, falling 72-33.

The non-conference loss snaps a two-game winning streak for Coupeville and drops it to 3-14 on the season.

The Wolves will have an almost immediate chance to reconcile things, however, as they travel to Sequim Thursday for the second half of an ultra-rare home-and-away non-conference match-up.

In the next three days, CHS needs to get quicker, much quicker, if they want to turn the tables on the guys in purple.

Sequim used superior speed, a huge edge on the boards and two back-breaking runs — 16-0 in the first half and 15-0 in the third quarter — to turns things into a rout.

Coupeville fell behind 6-0 in the early-going, not scoring until Gabe Wynn hit a pull-back jumper nearly three-and-a-half minutes into the game, and things got progressively rougher from there.

Trailing 21-6 at the first break, the Wolves couldn’t stop the rampage, falling behind by 23 shortly before halftime.

CHS got a few points back on a nice sideline jumper from Cope and a wild end-to-end run by Hunter Smith, who picked up three the hard way (a breakaway bucket and ensuing free throw) but things kept slipping away.

Other than one brief surge late in the third, when the Wolves banked home seven straight points — a breakaway off a steal and a three-ball, both from Smith, and an inside leaner from Shank — there wasn’t much to write home about.

Smith paced the Wolves with a team-high 12, while Shank dropped eight and Ethan Spark singed the nets for seven.

Cope, Wynn and Cameron Toomey-Stout each added a bucket, while Joey Lippo and Kyle Rockwell put in work on the boards.

Payton Glasser led Sequim with 23, dropping in 12 of those in the first quarter alone.

JV roughed up:

Playing without a point guard (freshmen Jered Brown is out with a broken collarbone), the young Wolves went down hard, losing 70-15.

“Worst loss of my career,” said JV coach Dustin Van Velkinburgh, and that was pretty much all he felt like saying on that.

The defeat drops the young guns to 7-10.

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Six days of suspense!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, Girls Basketball, tagged , , , , on January 30, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Lauren Rose (John Fisken photo)

   With players like Lauren Rose setting up teammates at every turn, the Wolf girls are 13-3 this season. (John Fisken photo)

It’s all about playoff seeding heading into the final week of the regular season for high school basketball.

On the girls side of things, Coupeville is the league champ — for a third-straight season — and Port Townsend has clinched second place.

Chimacum can clinch third place, and the league’s final playoff berth, with a win Tuesday against Klahowya.

If the Cowboys fall to the Eagles, though, things would be guaranteed to go all the way to the final game on both team’s schedule — a rematch Saturday that would then be a winner-take-all.

While Coupeville is locked in regardless, the Wolves do want to win their finale Saturday against Port Townsend.

Do that and they finish 9-0 for the third straight year and stretch the league’s longest unbeaten streak, in any sport, to 27-0.

Over on the boys side, only one of four teams is 100% confident in knowing its fate, and that’s league champ Port Townsend.

The other three schools can all finish anywhere between #2 and #4 depending on how the season’s final six days play out.

Coupeville, which pulled off back-to-back wins against Klahowya and Chimacum to end last week, still has a shot of catching the Cowboys for the #2 playoff seed … or falling completely out of the playoff picture.

Both are very long shots, though, with the odds heavily in favor of the Wolves finishing #3 and hosting a first-round loser-out postseason game.

To get #2, CHS has only one option — it has to beat Port Townsend in the season finale, while needing Chimacum to lose twice in five days to Klahowya.

That’s it.

Any other result and the Wolves can’t pull off the stunning late-season reversal.

They don’t have a tiebreaker against Chimacum, having lost two of three to the Cowboys, so have to finish with a better record.

To go to the other extreme, the only way Coupeville misses the postseason is if Klahowya wins its final three games (two tilts against Chimacum wrapped around a meeting with Port Townsend) and the Wolves drop that final battle with the RedHawks.

Will things end quickly — a Chimacum win Tuesday at Klahowya ends all speculation — or go down to the final day? Stay tuned.

Where things sit through Monday morning:

Olympic League girls basketball:

School League Overall
COUPEVILLE 8-0 13-3
Port Townsend 4-3 8-7
Chimacum 2-5 9-9
Klahowya 0-6 3-13

Olympic League boys basketball:

School League Overall
Port Townsend 7-0 13-3
Chimacum 3-4 3-12
COUPEVILLE 3-5 3-13
Klahowya 1-5 3-13

And scoring stats for Coupeville’s varsity players:

Girls:

Kailey Kellner – 148
Mikayla Elfrank – 98
Mia Littlejohn – 90
Lindsey Roberts – 60
Kalia Littlejohn – 55
Tiffany Briscoe – 37
Lauren Grove – 36
Lauren Rose – 30
Sarah Wright – 15
Kyla Briscoe – 7
Allison Wenzel – 4
Charlotte Langille – 2

Boys:

Hunter Smith – 255
Gabe Wynn – 184
Brian Shank – 103
Ethan Spark – 99
Hunter Downes – 36
Joey Lippo – 20
Cameron Toomey-Stout – 18
Steven Cope – 11
Ariah Bepler – 5
Jered Brown – 5

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Cue the late-season charge!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, tagged , , , , , on January 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Brian Shank (John Fisken photo)

   Wolf senior Brian Shank soared for five Friday as the Wolf boys won their second straight league game. (John Fisken photo)

Every point counts.

Give Coupeville High School boys’ basketball manager Axel Partida a huge assist Friday night.

He caught Chimacum in a uniform violation, giving Wolf senior Gabe Wynn two free throws thanks to a technical foul called on the host Cowboys.

Wynn drilled both of them — part of his team’s superb 13 of 15 work at the charity stripe — and that helped CHS hold off a late rally to escape with a 56-53 win.

The second straight Olympic League victory for the Wolves, it lifts them to 3-5 and pulls them within a half-game of Chimacum in the race for second place.

League champ Port Townsend can’t be caught at 7-0, but the Cowboys (3-4) are getting an unexpected challenge late from Coupeville.

Admittedly, it’s still a long-shot.

The Wolves, 3-13 overall, need to upend Port Townsend in their league finale Feb. 4 and have Chimacum stumble twice in the final week against Klahowya (1-5) to finish in second place.

If Coupeville and Chimacum finish with the same record, the Cowboys own the tiebreaker, having taken two of three games played between the teams this season.

The win, however, did strengthen Coupeville’s hold on third-place, which they need to claim the league’s final playoff berth.

The Wolves are a game up on Klahowya and own the tiebreaker, so the ONLY way they miss the postseason is if they lose to Port Townsend and the Eagles win all three of their league games next week.

OK, now that we’re all confused, let’s jump back to Friday night’s game.

Coupeville rode another red-hot performance from junior Hunter Smith, who, a game after scoring 34 in a win over Klahowya, torched the nets at Chimacum for 26.

He did most of his damage in the second quarter, raining down 14 as the Wolves blew open a tied game, turning a 13-13 stalemate after one into a 31-21 lead at the break.

Chimacum chipped away at the deficit in the second half, putting together 20-18 and 12-7 quarters, but the Wolves held fast and held on when it mattered.

Ethan Spark added 11 and Wynn knocked down 10 to back Smith up, while Brian Shank popped for five and Joey Lippo and Steven Cope each scored two points.

Cameron Toomey-Stout rounded out a very short bench, chipping in with his customary Energizer Rabbit hustle, ball-hawking defense and impeccable hair.

JV falls in second half:

A close game turned a lot less close after halftime, as the Wolf young guns saw a seven-point deficit turn into a 73-36 rout.

It was just 34-27 at the break, but the Cowboys turned up the offense after the break, with a 23-4 fourth quarter run a real killer.

Mason Grove paced the Wolves with 13, including three treys, while Sean Toomey-Stout played through a lingering shoulder injury to knock down 11.

Ulrik Wells (4), Kyle Rockwell (3), Ariah Bepler (3), Aram Leyva (1) and Tucker Hall (1) also scored, while Jacobi Pacquette-Pilgrim, Koa Davison, Gavin Knoblich, Nikolai Lyngra and Elliott Johnson saw floor time.

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Hunter Smith is a bad man!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, tagged , , , , , on January 24, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Hunter Smith knocked down a team-high 15 Friday night in an overtime loss. (John Fisken photo)

   Hunter Smith knocked down a season-high 34 Tuesday to lift Coupeville past Klahowya in a must-win game. (John Fisken photo)

Too bad Hunter Smith has already won the WIAA Athlete of the Week award this winter.

The Coupeville High School junior put on an award-worthy performance Tuesday night, torching the nets for a game-high 34 to spark the Wolves to a 60-58 win at Klahowya in a game with huge playoff implications.

The win, which came after Coupeville rallied from a seven-point deficit headed into the fourth, lifts CHS to 2-5 in Olympic League play, 2-13 overall.

It also moves them a half game up on Klahowya (1-5, 3-13) for the league’s third and final playoff spot. Having taken two of three against the Eagles this season, the Wolves own the tiebreaker, as well.

Coupeville, which has two league games left — Friday at Chimacum (3-3, 3-10) and Feb. 4 at Port Townsend (7-0, 12-3) — will need to win both, and hope for some help, to catch the Cowboys for second place.

But thanks to Smith, and teammate Gabe Wynn, who pumped in 17 in support, the Wolves now have a serious edge on Klahowya for third place.

Hold on and they will host a loser-out playoff game against the #4 seed from the Nisqually League, which is currently Bellevue Christian.

Both teams came out and put on a show Tuesday, exchanging leads back and forth.

Riding a 13-point outburst from Smith, who had three treys in the early going, Coupeville led 20-15 at the first break.

The Eagles responded, knotting things up at 33 at the half (despite 11 more in the second from Smith), then used a 16-9 third-quarter surge to stake themselves to a 49-42 lead with eight minutes on the clock.

Coupeville hacked away at the lead, sharing the ball between Smith, Wynn, Brian Shank and Ethan Spark, who combined to hit five baskets and, maybe more importantly, eight free throws.

A streaky team at the line, the Wolves were money in the fourth, led by Wynn, who was a sizzlin’ 7 of 8 for the game at the charity stripe.

Klahowya may have been shafted of a chance to tie or win at the end, however, as there was a jump ball called with one second to play.

The clock ran out, and, instead of re-setting the clock at 0:01 and giving the ball to the Eagles, the refs reportedly ankled for the door, leaving local fans frustrated.

The Wolves went with a short bench, getting all of their scoring from Smith (34), Wynn (17), Shank (6) and Spark (3).

Joey Lippo, Steven Cope and Cameron Toomey-Stout delivered quality minutes, with Toomey-Stout coming up with a key fourth quarter steal that turned into a bucket at crunch time.

JV gets battered:

The score wasn’t all that important, as the Wolves had to deal with losing two key players to injury.

Down by one at the half, Coupeville left Sean Toomey-Stout on the sidelines coming out of the locker room (shoulder injury), then lost Jered Brown to a broken collarbone in the third.

After that, “the wheels sort of fell off,” according to JV coach Dustin Van Velkinburgh, and the Wolves eventually lost by 23.

The defeat sends the young guns to 7-8 overall, 2-5 in league play.

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