The Coupeville girls basketball team had a difficult time putting a lot of points on the board and dropped a pair of Cascade League games to Sultan and King’s on Friday and Saturday.

At Sultan Jan. 5, the Wolves hung right with the Turks until the last period before being outscored 24-10 in the final eight minutes to lose 63-44.

In a home game against King’s Jan. 6, the Wolves were held to single-digit scoring for three periods as the top-ranked Knights were 62-23 winners.

The losses dropped Coupeville’s season record to 3-7 overall and 0-4 in league games.

Despite the losses, coach Geoff Kappes remains upbeat about the Wolves’ chances in the remaining games this season.

“After the Sultan game, I wondered whether or not we were going to give a 100 percent effort for 32 minutes and we did,” Kappes said. “My girls worked hard the entire time. We were working on our stuff much more than we were worried about what they were going to do. We want to improve every game, that’s our goal, and I think we did that tonight. In the Sultan game, we had a rough time. It was a very, very physical game and every time we’d try to put two plays together, it seemed like there was a call against us that broke the momentum.”

King’s went on a 14-1 scoring run in the first period to take a 16-3 lead and never looked back.

At the end of the first period the Knights were leading 20-10, but Coupeville hung tough and played good defense as the second quarter began.

At one point, the Wolves trailed by just six points, 20-14, and held King’s scoreless until the 4:06 mark when Bianca Rowland finally broke the dry spell and scored the Knights’ first basket.

King’s got hot from the field once again in the final four minutes of the second quarter scoring 13 points while holding the Wolves to two, and pushed the margin to a commanding 35-16 halftime advantage.

The Wolves were held to a pair of free throws in the third quarter and King’s continued to blister the net to cruise into the final eight minutes of the game with a 55-18 lead.

Coupeville was held to a mere seven points in the second half.

“The girls are looking forward to going through this league again,” Kappes said. “Right now, they are learning what it is to be in the Cascade Conference. I think the second time through we are going to show a lot of improvement.”

Smith scored a team-high nine points against King’s and tied with Sarah Burgoyne for team-high scoring honors in the game against Sultan with 10 points.