Napa does everything right in thrashing of Vacaville
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Don Lex (LuckyDuckImages.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Last season the Napa High basketball team played Vacaville tough both times they met, but couldn’t beat the eventual league winners.
So, the rematch was a chance for Napa to exact some revenge, and they sure did get that revenge as they whooped the Bulldogs, 58-25, on Tuesday night.
“It really does,” said Napa senior Zach Swim on finally beating Vacaville. “My whole high school career Vacaville’s kinda been the best team in our league, but now we switched and it’s been a little different. It feels really good to beat Vacaville, especially at our home court, so it was nice to finally get a win.”
“It feels good,” Napa coach Zack Cook said of routing Vacaville. “They’ve beaten up on us pretty good for the last few years except one game two years ago we got them, but always good to get a win against a quality program that is often in the playoffs and a really good coaching staff and we kinda play the same way they play. Same type of athletes, so yeah it’s nice to get a win against Vacaville.”
The win is also Napa’s fourth consecutive victory.
“It’s the momentum,” Swim said of the four-game winning streak. “Really our starters putting us ahead early, and then I think last year when we went ahead we wouldn’t really finish them off. When we went ahead we would just kinda ease off a little bit, but this year we’re really pushing for it and pushing on to get ahead during the second half and then getting a couple bench guys in and letting them get the minutes too.”
From the opening tip it was apparent that the Grizzlies (5-2) weren’t going to give up very many points, as the Bulldogs (3-3) only scored 25 points.
“Honestly, as a team we just play great team defense,” Swim said of the strong defensive effort on the night. “Plugging our gaps and then our help guy was there, so that really helped. And then, we got a bunch of key steals off of that to put us ahead early.”
“Our defense was stingy,” Cook added on the strong defensive showing. “We got after them a little bit with the press and then in the half court we had a couple little breakdowns on the ball screens and not helping on the roll man, but overall our defense looked really good.”
Another thing that was impressive was Napa’s free-throw shooting. The Grizzlies went 8-for-8 from the line in the first half and ended the night 15-for-19.
Napa’s sharing of the ball was impressive too. All their scoring on the night was nicely spread out, which shows how well they shared the rock. Swim ended the night leading the way with 13 points and six rebounds, but Danny Ruiz had 12 points and three rebounds to go along with Stephen Blume’s 11 points.
“We’ve been pretty spread out with our scoring all year,” Cook explained of the spread out point totals. “I think we have three guys in double figures right now, so that’s kinda how we want to play. We want to spread it out and we’re lucky to have three or four guys that can give us double digits every night.”
“It means that a lot of us could score,” Swim explained of the evenly distributed points totals. “Like a lot of us are a threat on the court, which is a key to beat a bunch of good teams that we need to beat later in the season. So, I think that’s really good that we all had a lot of points. So, I think it means that we can all score, which is good.”
Napa’s next game isn’t until Thursday, December 13th in the Brett Callan Memorial Tournament over at Casa Grande High School in Petaluma. To begin the tournament they’ll face Montgomery-Santa Rosa.
