Blume, Greenlee help Napa claim first win of season over former league foe Armijo
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
The Napa High boys basketball team picked up their first win of young season on Saturday night by beating Armijo-Fairfield 63-49.
It was a nice win for the Grizzlies (1-1) due to the fact that Armijo used to be a league foe of theirs for years.
“It feels good to get your first win no matter what, but yeah nice to get it against Armijo,” Napa coach Zack Cook said of claiming their first victory. “They’re a much improved team. They didn’t have one senior last year, so they got literally their whole team back. Their coach has them playing a lot better – it’s his second year with them now, so very strong win for us, it feels good.”
“It’s good,” Napa senior guard Stephen Blume said of beating the Indians. “We don’t have the best overall record in the past few years with them, so it was good to get on top, and it sucks we don’t see them in league this year but that’s alright.”
Napa got great efforts on the night from Blume Brayden Greenlee, and Zach Swim.
Blume led Napa on the night by scoring 19 points.
“I don’t know, I was just kinda feeling it tonight,” Blume said of his strong night. “I got shots and knocked them down, did a good job working the offense.”
“Yeah, it was great to see him stroking it,” Cook said of his senior guard’s good game. “He’s been through a lot, he’s battled a lot of injuries off and on the last year and a half, and he’s finally fully healthy and it’s great. It couldn’t happen to a better kid he’s a hard worker, so hopefully he can keep it going. If he shoots like that we can be a pretty dangerous team.”
Greenlee also added 12 points on the night. Cook expects him to give the team a good amount of points off the bench this season.
“Brayden’s going to be great on the varsity level for us,” he said of the sophomore guard. “He is our most gifted scorer. He’s just a natural scorer, he does a lot of things you can’t teach. He’s got a nose for the basket, and when he’s scoring that just makes our team even better. His second half really propelled us to the victory.”
Swim, who will be a leader on the team this year also added 12 points to help the guide the Grizzlies to victory.
Up next Napa will face Santa Rosa on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Then, they’ll host the annual Wine Valley Tournament Thursday through Saturday.
“It’ll be a tough game,” Cook said of Tuesday’s matchup with Santa Rosa. “They’re another team that pretty much returns all their guys. We’re going to their gym. We played them in a fall league and they took it to us pretty good, they press a lot, and get the game going up and down, so we’ll have to be mentally prepared, we’ll have to take care of the ball, and just trust what we want to do.”
