Vintage gains huge advantage early on in rout of Pioneer
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Anastasia Busby (Vintage High Yearbook)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Impressive is one word you could use to describe the Vintage girls basketball team on Wednesday night.
The Crushers (2-1) put on a solid display of ball movement, which helped them romp Pioneer of Woodland by a score of 65-25.
“Well, it’s early in the year, so we’re trying to get good at all the stuff we do,” Vintage coach Joe Donohoe said. “We should be improving every night. We’re playing ourselves into shape, but this has been a weird start to a basketball season. You know, conditioning ended and tryouts and everything else. We’re getting there though, I couldn’t be happier about the effort tonight, which that’s all I really care about – if we give our best effort then we can live with the outcome.”
Another thing Vintage did well was minimize the turnovers, which was something that Donohoe was happy about.
It was also a night of confidence building as Vintage was able to clear their bench. The unit played considerably better than they did in their first home game against Windsor on Monday.
“They definitely handled the pressure much better,” Donohoe explained. “I think we only had maybe 11 turnovers the whole game, so we had 11 turnovers in the first quarter the other night. I said ‘we can’t turn the ball over when you’re on the court, so if you want to stay on the court don’t turn the ball over’, and they listened and they ran the offense good and they rebounded and the energy and the intensity was fantastic. That was our goal tonight to have commitment and intensity the whole night.”
However, if there’s one thing the Crushers still need to work on it would be not giving up the sideline when on defense.
“Whenever you let your player dribble up the sideline you put all four of your teammates in a tough spot,” Donohoe emphasized on not giving the opponent the sideline to dribble up the court. “It usually ends in a layup and a foul or a foul or somebody else having to leave their player and their player getting wide open for a shot. So, we have a stern rule about not giving up any sideline or any baseline, and obviously we need to practice a little more on that. I think they got the point at the halftime and postgame (meeting) about that.”
Vintage was lead by their big three of Alyssa Andrews, Nicole Gleeson, and Kate Ilsley on the night as they alone outscored the Patriots (2-2). The trio combined for 39 points.
Andrews ended the night with 15 points and two rebounds. Gleeson and Ilsley each had 12 points
Up next for Vintage is a meeting with former Monticello Empire League foe Vacaville on Monday at 7 p.m.
