If the Coupeville football team’s defensive unit needed a test, it received one against a senior-laden Granite Falls squad on Friday.

The Wolves played hard but made some mistakes early in the game that proved to be costly, and ended up on the short end of a 16-7 score.

Hampered by injuries to a couple of key offensive players the defense spent a lot of time on the field. Despite the loss, coach Ron Bagby remained positive.

“We played hard and hit them hard, but we just made too many mistakes,” Bagby said.

Granite Falls, an AA division school compared to Coupeville’s Class A, had 10 senior starting players, many of whom played on last spring’s state championship baseball team, and a big crowd was in attendance for homecoming.

Coupeville was in trouble after the first series of plays when a bad snap to punter Alex Evans gave Granite Falls possession at the Wolves’ 29-yard line.

The defense rose to the occasion and it took Granite Falls nine plays before quarterback Billy Villegas managed to hit wide receiver Sean Nelson on a 6-yard scoring pass with 5:44 remaining in the quarter.

Playing without junior running back Clay Hughes who was sidelined with a sprained ankle, Coupeville was unable to get anything going on offense and was held without a first down in the opening quarter.

“With Clay out of the lineup, we had to mix some things up and we were still able to play with them,” Bagby said.

At the 11:07 mark of the second period, Nelson hit a 21-yard field goal to give the Tigers a 10-0 lead.

The Wolves finally got on the board with 48 seconds remaining in the half when Casey Larson made a great catch at the goal line on a 26-yard pass from James Smith. Evans nailed the extra point and the Wolves went into half time trailing 10-7.

Granite Falls took the second half kickoff and mounted a 13-play, 51-yard drive for touchdown. Villegas punched the ball in from 1-yard out and the score was 16-7 with 5:40 showing on the clock.

“That first drive of the third quarter kind of took the wind out of us and took a lot of time off the clock,” Bagby said.

“We hit them hard, but we just couldn’t stop the drive. We’ll be coming home next week and we should have everyone healthy by then,” Evans said.

Coupeville’s offense continued to sputter in the second half and until the 4:09 mark of the fourth quarter, the Wolves managed to run just nine offensive plays.

“We couldn’t get anything started and it hurts not having Clay with us,” Smith said. “We’ll bounce back next week.”

The Wolves mounted an 11-play drive as the clock wound down but with 1:38 remaining, Brandon Brown intercepted a Smith pass and that was the game.

“We played tough on defense but we couldn’t get it done,” Chad Caveness said. “We started stepping it up at the end.”

Larson led Coupeville in rushing with 39 yards on 13 carries and caught six passes for 48 yards and a touchdown.

Smith was 11 for 16 in passing good for 95 yards with one touchdown and an interception.

Coupeville hosts South Whidbey for homecoming on Friday. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.