Winter preview: With youthful group NVC men’s basketball looks to back up last seasons success
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Don Lex (LuckyDuckImages.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Last year the Napa Valley College men’s basketball team made waves with their success, but they ultimately came up just shy of making the California Community College Athletic Association playoffs.
Last year the Storm ended the season with a record of 16-11 overall to go along with a solid 12-4 Bay Valley Conference mark.
However, this season Napa Valley has an extremely young group as the team consists of only two sophomores on the 12-man roster.
“Last year we had quite a bit of third-year sophomores, so we had some veterans,” Napa Valley College coach Steve Ball explained. “It was nice in a lot of ways, the problem is with a team like that where you’ve been around long enough you’ve heard it before, so you think you know everything and you don’t and you’re not nearly as malleable and coachable. This year’s group is very inexperienced as far as at this level, so it could be a problem, could be an issue as we open the season in a very tough tournament, but they are from top to bottom the depth of the coachability they’re the most coachable group that I’ve ever coached as far as top to bottom there’s not one guy on this team that doesn’t listen when they’re having a difficult time learning something new, something that’s out of their comfort zone. They all listen really well and are very coachable.”
The only two sophomores on the team this year are Malcolm Bracy and David Skeete. Both are expected to be leaders with the plethora of freshman around them.
“David’s older and he is experienced. He played a year at Grays Harbor up in (Aberdeen) Washington in the JuCo system there, so he’s not familiar with the California JuCo system, but he’s older and mature, he does get stuff done, he rebounds really well, runs the floor really hard. Malcolm’s been in our program for a year and was at DVC (Pleasant Hill) as a grey shirt before that, so he’s been coached, his brother’s on staff now, so that helps. I look to him when we’re doing our warmup drills I’ll just give him a hand gesture or a nod and he’ll know what drill to do next, so it’s great with leadership that way. He is not the most vocal and critical teammate, so at times it’d be nice for him to step up and be more vocal, but his leadership by example and he’s got just great composure, he never gets too high, he never gets too low and he’s a good sophomore for the guys to look up to,” said Ball on the leadership for the season.
Bracy was one of the backup guards last season and got a fair amount of playing time last season.
“Malcolm got a lot of experience last year,” Ball added on Bracy. “You know he played behind a couple of really good guards. And then he ended up starting I don’t know how many games, but he started some games for us as well. He was just really composed, always has been and that experience having been there even accentuates his composure even more.”
Three of the freshmen on this years team are Napa High School graduates. Saleem Ali-Musa graduated in 2016, while Tomas Gomez-Espana and Dakota Macias graduated in 2017.
“Starting with Dakota he’s a really scrappy young man. He does everything we ask of him. He’s kind of playing a little bit out of position maybe, not as vertically athletic as some guys, but very coachable, great team guy, great teammate, sets good screens, reads the floor really well. Saleem is getting more and more athletic as he works with coach Carson – he’s getting more and more bouncy and more consistent with his bounce. Like there are days where he has in the past had max vertical days, but then his next day his legs would be a little dead. But as he works out with coach Carson his consistent strength and athleticism are there, his floor is raised up quite a bit. He was already athletic to begin with, but now he’s even more consistent with his athleticism – we look for him to run the floor, rebound for us, he brings us some toughness, and (is) very coachable as well. Tomas is one of the better shooters in in Northern California right now. He comes off screens well, we can talk to him in a way where he’s not fighting it – he’s very receptive to the information that he’s receiving, and he has a good relationship with everybody because he’s been in the program for a year as well,” Ball added about the three Napa players.
The other players new to the team are: Braxton Adderly, Scottie Strong, Amir Nakaei, Terrance Coates, Oscar Frank, Jordan Toliver, and Tylor Gerrard. To view the full roster go here.
Napa Valley played a good amount of scrimmages in September. On September 22nd and 23rd they participated in the City College of San Francisco Jamboree. Later, on September 26th Napa Valley hosted a three-team showcase. In the showcase Napa faced Diablo Valley College of Pleasant Hill and Mendocino-Ukiah.
“I think we got a lot out of it,” Ball explained of the scrimmages. “I think the guys all got some experience. I think that the rotation will be shorter come regular-season. I think almost every game except for one we had a lead with about five minutes to go or we were down by one possession with five minutes to go and then we ended up not winning as many as we’d liked, but hopefully that experience, putting guys in that position will allow their nerves to be less when it comes to season time and they’re put back in that position, so hopefully we can learn how to hold onto games and hold onto wins there. Hopefully that’s what we learn from what not to do towards the end of the game and how to be more efficient.”
Just like in previous years the preseason schedule will present a challenge for Napa.
To begin the season the Storm will meet Fresno City College on Friday in the City College of San Francisco tip-off tournament that runs from November 2nd-4th. FCC is ranked third in the CCMBA Preaseason Poll. The hosts CCSF, won the CCCAA men’s basketball title last season and begin the year ranked No. 1 in the poll.
“Same thing every year we start with that tournament,” Ball said of beginning the season at CCSF. “We showed them some film of Fresno’s first game last year where a minute-and-a-half they were up 11-0 because the other team thought that it was an open gym, and they know that they’ve got to compete hard for every second. In fact, they platoon guys five guys go in, five guys go out every minute or minute-and-a-half or thirty seconds sometimes depending on how the game’s going. So they keep guys fresh and energetic and we’re looking to have that eye-opening experience and opening experience and realize ‘oh, this is what coach meant’ because we can tell them how hard it it until we’re blue in the face, but until they step on the floor as freshmen and realize you know they used to say about Mike Tyson ‘everyone’s got a gameplan till you get punched in the mouth’, so that’s kinda what we look for for this eye-opening experience in opening weekend.”
Napa Valley will also play in the Allan Hancock tournament November 16-18th in Santa Maria, which is also an annual thing for them.
“I think it’s great for us to get out of the area, play some different teams, but also to have to come together,” Ball emphasized on the travel down to Southern California. “We spend six hours in a van together, and then we stay the night in rooms, we have roommates and we have to get up together, we have to see each other for you know 72 straight hours and it really can bring us together. We like to make a trip to the ocean there. It’s a lot of fun, so we’re really looking forward to that trip.”
They’ll also take part in the James Clark Memorial Tournament at Cosumnes River College in Elk Grove November 29th through December 1st.
“We really like that one too,” Ball said of the tournament in Elk Grove. “Coach Clark was a great man. His family runs that tournament, so we always want to continue to pay ammage to him in that way by continuing to go to that tournament. It’s good competition there every year. The other tournaments are all different from the opening tournament. The rest of the tournaments we’re looking to go 2-1 at the worst, and those are some winnable games in there if we’re playing properly we can do that, so we’re looking for some good experience. It’s not that far away, so we get to sleep in our own beds and it’s a good measuring stick for us.”
To end the non-conference schedule the Storm will play in the Kris Kringle tournament December 13th-15th at Santa Rosa Junior College.
“Then we finish up with the Santa Rosa tournament, which is always competitive,” Ball explained of the Kris Kringle tournament. “It’s nice to be right over the way, and our guys always enjoy it. It’s a great tournament, coach (Craig) McMillan always has a great team every year. Looking past Fresno is a bad idea, so I don’t even know what the bracket looks like for that Santa Rosa tournament, but we’re excited to go to that one as well. It is our final tune-up and then I think the next week we start with our first conference game.”
The Storm will begin Bay Valley Conference play at Merritt on December 20th. Their first home BVC game will be against the College of Marin on December 28th. All of NVC’s home games will begin at 6 p.m. For the complete schedule go here.
“The idea every year is ‘if the preseason doesn’t kill you it’ll make you stronger’,” Ball said during in an interview on October 23rd. “So we want to get loaded up with difficult games there and then you know it’s like running with ankle weights on. You’re running and running and running and you take the ankle weights off you’re like ‘oh, this isn’t that hard’, so we try and overload with ranked opponents in the preseason and we continue to coach and we continue to teach them and we never stop doing that, so our record in January and February is a lot better than it was in November. So that’s kinda what we’re looking for again to continue to progress, to continue to keep our chin up, to keep grinding away, and these guys are young men that are athletic and very moldable and they listen very well, so I don’t see any reason why we can’t improve in conference and through conference.”
New to the coaching staff this year is Brandon Bracy, the older brother of Malcolm. Bracy is a former assistant coach at American Canyon High School and is the founder of Team Rampage AAU basketball. He coaches the Team Rampage 17-and-under team and will also be an assistant coach at Vallejo High School this season.
“He’s very relatable with the players, he’s been a coach, he’s lead an AAU group, a couple club teams, he really is good with and enjoys skill development and recruiting, so he’s recruiting a lot of the local guys,” Ball explained of the newest addition to his coaching staff. “He helps us in the recruiting aspect and he helps us with the skill development primarily, but there isn’t a part of the game that he doesn’t help us with. Both he and Carson are very involved everything – I don’t like to just coach myself and let them be the ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ – I want them to jump in there, I want them to be in front of the team, I want them to develop their coaching skills, so that maybe one day they’re in the position like I am.”
Carson Carattini will also return to the staff to for his third season to help Ball.
“He is great with recruiting, does a great job with the guys, he’s amazing in the strength and conditioning program,” Ball said of Carattini. “Last year he started to coach the defense a little bit as well, but he does all of our strength and conditioning. In the two years that he was here I think we had zero guys other than ankle injuries miss games due to injuries, so his whole strength and conditioning program is great. It’s all about injury prevention and functional strength. You know we’re not a bunch of bodybuilders, we won’t be the guys that step off the bus and they’re thinking that we’re going to a bodybuilding program. We’re just very strong and pound-for-pound effective.”
