Joel Walstad rained down 17 points Friday, including the game-winning free throws. (John Fisken photos)
“Hi, my name is CJ Smith and I’m unflappable under pressure.”
They needed this one, in so many ways.
To stay in the thick of the playoff race. For an emotional rebound after a blowout loss. To make themselves, and everyone else, true believers that they’re capable of closing a game.
So, when the Coupeville High School boys’ basketball team scored six points in the final 15 seconds Friday night to topple visiting Port Townsend 53-49, the resulting explosion of joy from the floor and stands was understandable.
Relief mixed with jubilation as the Wolves improved to 5-9 and moved into a third-place tie with the Redhawks in the Olympic League at 1-3.
Had they lost, they would have trailed Port Townsend by two games with five to play in the hunt for the four-team league’s final playoff berth.
Chimacum (3-0) and Klahowya (2-1), which were scheduled to tip off later Friday night, hold down the top two spots.
For the Wolves, their hard-earned victory, which avenged an earlier-season loss across the water, was huge.
Forced to play most of the first half without foul-plagued leading scorer Wiley Hesselgrave, down by seven after a cold start in the third, stabbed several times by the refs in the waning moments, they refused to blink, refused to lose.
“This was a good team win. We tell them, all that hard work will pay off, as long as we continue to believe in each other, and they did,” said CHS coach Anthony Smith. “I am super, super proud of my guys and how they played.”
The game was a gut-wrencher at the end, as the two teams traded body blows.
Having used a 9-3 run to close the third, with Hesselgrave’s elegant three-pointer from deep on the left side slicing the lead to one, Coupeville opened the fourth with a bang.
Just as he had done to start the second quarter, Wolf big man Ryan Griggs, reviving the aggressive defensive style of dad Kit Manzanares, a former CHS hoops star back in the day, rose up and rejected a Townsend shot into the second row of the bleachers.
Riding high on emotion, the Wolves ripped off six straight points, with buckets from a gimpy but game Aaron Trumbull, an electric Joel Walstad (who threw down a season-high 17) and Hesselgrave.
But, up 47-44, Coupeville couldn’t hold the lead, even though they tried to hold the ball for a bit and burn the clock.
The Redhawks used a three-point play and a basket off a second-chance rebound to grab what would prove to be their final lead at 49-47.
Then, things got dramatic. Super dramatic.
Trumbull, playing on a beat-up leg and a lot of guts, appeared to tie the game, only to have his basket waved off by a ref after Griggs, flying high through the air, hit the rim.
The offensive goal-tending call was a questionable one, however, as the ball appeared to have already dropped through the net and was not on the rim, which would have required the basket being subtracted.
It would have been easy to break at that moment, but the Wolves refused.
Teammates grabbed Griggs and reassured him he had done nothing wrong, while Hesselgrave, channeling his inner Beast Mode, immediately forced a turnover at mid-court after freaking out the Redhawk ball-handler.
The sight of the Wolf middle linebacker charging at him, nostrils flaring and eyes afire, will haunt his dreams for years.
With the ball back in their possession, the Wolves opted to go away from their normal top scoring threats, riding the suddenly red-hot shooting touch of junior CJ Smith.
Crashing the paint from the side, while being hammered Detroit Pistons Bad Boys-style (they’re only going to call one foul, so all five players hit the shooter), he nailed a sweet runner under duress to forge the game’s final tie at 49.
While many would have expected the ball to go to Hesselgrave or Walstad in that situation, it was an easy call for the Wolf coaches to go to Smith, who finished with 11.
“CJ is the best player on our team in getting to the basket,” Anthony Smith said.
Still intent on backstabbing Coupeville, the refs took one final shot, calling a nit-picky foul as the Wolves appeared to force another turnover on the next play.
At which point all of Wolf Nation unleashed its vocal cords, the Redhawk shooter rimmed out his freebie and Walstad climbed the stairway to hoops heaven to grab the game’s biggest rebound.
The final eight seconds of the game was a clinic on grace under pressure, as Walstad and then Hesselgrave both swished a pair of free throws, while, in between, Port Townsend again missed the front end of a one-and-one.
The tension-racked ending capped a game where a different team led after each quarter.
Down 10-9 after one, Coupeville got six from Walstad in the second and put together a 16-11 run to take a four-point lead in at the break.
The third was a series of streaks, with Port Townsend reclaiming the lead, stretching it out to seven, then buckling under the charge of Hesselgrave in the final moments.
All of which set up a fourth quarter to remember and a win to treasure.
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