Wolf seniors Quinten Simpson-Pilgrim (left) and Cole White are cold-blooded killers on the hardwood. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
They keep this up, they’re going to turn their coach’s beard white.
We’re only one game into a new season, and already the Coupeville High School varsity boys’ basketball squad has a thriller and a chiller in the book.
Good thing is it turned out alright in the end, as the Wolves frittered away a 14-point lead late at Mount Baker Monday but came up with a series of huge gut-check plays in the waning moments to snatch back a 58-52 win.
Now someone go and check on Brad Sherman’s stubble before CHS gets back on the bus Wednesday to go play The Bush School in Seattle.
Monday’s rumble was controlled by Coupeville most of the way, before things got frantic late.
Down by 14 early in the second half, and still trailing by 10 in the fourth quarter, Mount Baker went on an 11-0 run to claim the lead at 50-49 with a fraction over three minutes to play.
That gave the Mountaineers their first advantage since way back at 10-9 and could have fractured the Wolves.
Except a team which features nine seniors, several of whom won a league title and went to state as sophomores, seems to be pretty battle-tested and not prone to flinching.
Instead, Coupeville responded with a three-minute master class in being the kind of closers Alec Baldwin loved in Glengarry Glen Ross.
While that’s probably not a movie reference many of the current Wolves will get, we can keep it simple and say it means this — be a killer.
And Sherman’s hoops assassins were.
Quinten Simpson-Pilgrim came off the bench, literally pushed onto the floor by his coach, and immediately hauled down a key rebound in the middle of a scrum.
Cole White, the wiry guard who has a huge Facebook following thanks to mom Morgan’s live broadcasts, made off with a steal and drew a HUGE foul on his foe, nimbly crashing hard to the floor while absorbing pain to get the call on an offensive charge.
And then there was Nick Guay, who hadn’t scored, drilling the bottom of the net out on a three-ball from the left corner to immediately put Coupeville back in front at 52-50.
Mount Baker slid one more layup through the net to knot things up, before the Wolves iced them the rest of the way.
Logan Downes went coast to coast for a swooping layup to stake his squad to a lead it wouldn’t relinquish, before Downes and White closed out the game at the line.
The Mountaineers had two charity shots of their own in the waning seconds but loudly clanged both of them off the rim to the delight of the Wolf fan section, which was much more vocal than the locals.
White opened the game, and the season, with a pullup jumper off a pass from William Davidson, then Downes and running mate Ryan Blouin traded buckets as Coupeville surged to a 20-12 lead at the first break.
Blouin was calm, composed, and a weapon of mass destruction.
He fired up a trio of three-balls in the first quarter, and netted all three, with the net barely rippling as each dagger sank through with a happy little sigh.
For his part, Downes worked his magic at the free throw line, accounting for five of his nine points while everyone else was standing still.
Once he got going, he was hard to stop, raining down 13 of Coupeville’s 15 points in the second quarter as the Wolves stretched their lead to 35-23.
Downes banged home his own trio of treys in the second frame, with the third one giving him exactly 800 career points, tying him with noted three-ball terror Hawthorne Wolfe.
The lone second quarter bucket not to come off of Downes fingertips came from Hunter Bronec, who banked in a layup off of a lob from Downes.
White was already busy on the defensive end, drawing an offensive charge to blunt a Baker fastbreak, while Zane Oldenstadt picked the pocket of a fellow big man for a crucial steal.
Coupeville looked like it would send the game into blowout territory after Davidson, channeling Hakeem Olajuwon for one play, snared a rebound and flipped the ball back up and in to kick off the second half.
Up 37-23, the Wolves were cruising in the yacht, only to hit some unexpected, choppy waters,
Mount Baker popped a pair of three-balls, turned up the heat a bit and closed back within four points late in the third quarter.
Well, actually within two, only to have the officials wave off a field goal due to offensive goaltending.
While the Mountaineers weren’t happy to lose the bucket, they barely complained, knowing and accepting that the botched play was so obvious even a pack of high school refs could see it.
White and Downes closed the third with a pair of free throws apiece, packaged around a steal from Simpson-Pilgrim, to push the lead out to 47-39.
A turnaround jumper from White to open the fourth put the lead back into double-digits, and you know where it goes from there.
Downes finished with a game-high 31 points, eventually passing Wolfe to move into 14th on the CHS boys’ basketball career scoring list.
With 809 and counting, he heads to Seattle just a bucket away from tying ’70s star Corey Cross (811) for 13th, with Hunter Smith (847) and Bill Jarrell (855) next up on the list after that.
White rippled the nets for 11 Monday, with Blouin (9), Guay (3), Davidson (2), and Bronec (2) rounding out the offensive attack.
Oldenstadt, Simpson-Pilgrim, and Hurlee Bronec also saw floor time, with Mikey Robinett, Timothy Nitta and Chase Anderson providing vocal support from the bench.
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