Cole White kick-starts the offense. (Morgan White photo)
The first surge, they overcame. The second was a crippler.
Playing with fiery intensity Saturday night, the Coupeville High School varsity boys basketball squad pushed visiting Lakewood hard.
But while the Wolves survived a 12-0 Cougar run early, they couldn’t overcome a hail of three-balls in the third quarter, which turned a four-point game into a 16-point deficit.
The result?
A 77-61 non-conference loss to a 2A school, but a defeat which could pay huge benefits down the road.
The Wolves, now 0-2 on the young season, open with a tough non-league schedule.
The goal is to help shape a new-look team under fire, to get them ready to defend their title once Northwest 2B/1B League play starts in January.
The early games, which continue next week with a road trip to Tacoma to play Concordia Christian Academy, followed by a home game with Sultan, is the gauntlet set up to build a strong Wolf team.
And that strong team is already here, at least in parts, as Coupeville played Lakewood to a virtual standstill if you toss out the third quarter.
Having fought back from a 14-point deficit, the Wolves went to the half on the high of a 14-4 run.
It was fueled by seven points off the bench from junior Nick Guay, with the final bucket a three-ball which tickled the twines a millisecond ahead of the buzzer.
The Wolves had whipped the ball around the arc, keeping the leather moving and away from Lakewood defenders, before Guay stepped up and made all the fans scream.
Coming on the heels of another trey, this one from Ryan Blouin, and a short jumper from Cole White off a feed from rumbling big man William Davidson, Guay’s buzzer-beater cut the margin to 32-28.
Coupeville, which got a huge spark on both ends of the floor from Jonathan Valenzuela, looked ready to go toe-to-toe, and shot-for-shot, with Lakewood.
Until the Cougars started dropping daggers.
Led by Benjamin Rucker, who popped five three-balls as part of a game-high 23-point performance, Lakewood suddenly couldn’t miss from long distance as the second half began.
Valenzuela slapped home a pair of buckets, before Logan Downes went off for Coupeville’s next nine points, but the Cougars were collecting two baskets for every one the Wolves scored.
In a game in which the two teams tallied the same exact number of points in the second and fourth quarter, and Lakewood was narrowly ahead 18-14 at the end of the first frame, the third quarter was fatal.
The Cougars finished the eight-minute span with a 25-13 advantage, and the die was cast.
Coupeville still fought impressively in the fourth quarter, from Downes getting back on defense to deliver a resounding blocked shot, to Alex Murdy converting a pair of steals into breakaway buckets.
Three Wolves — Chase Anderson, Jermiah Copeland, and Davidson — notched their first varsity points as well, but CHS ultimately couldn’t get its deficit back down to single digits.
While Rucker finished with 23, Downes almost matched him, tossing in 16 of his team-high 22 points in the second half.
Many of his buckets came on bold rampages through the paint, as the junior crashed hard to the hoop again and again, often with the refs ignoring the multitude of defender arms hitting him in the face.
Valenzuela, who snatched rebounds off the glass and prowled like a panther unleashed, finished with 10 points for CHS, with White (8), Guay (7), and Murdy (6) also coming strong.
Blouin (3), Anderson (2), Copeland (2), and Davidson (1) rounded out the offense, while Dominic Coffman and Quinten Simpson-Pilgrim provided a defensive spark.
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