Vintage overcomes slow start to notch first league win over Casa Grande
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Anastasia Busby (Vintage High Yearbook)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Trends are a very common occurrence in sports and every team has multiple good or bad trends.
For example, the Vintage girls basketball team has been a second half team all season, and that trend continued on Tuesday night in their 40-26 win over Casa Grande of Petaluma on Tuesday night.
“I’d like to be a both half team to be honest,” Vintage coach Joe Donohoe explained with a hint of sarcasm. “Casa Grande, they make you get out of your rhythm and the way they play that defense. You know they’re good at it, I told them it was going to be a dogfight until we decide to stick with that game or play our own game, and we talked about it in practice the last couple of days and it came to fruition definitely.”
But the Crushers (6-4, 1-0 Vine Valley Athletic League) also played good defense this contest, especially in the second half. They only gave up 11 points in the second half, but in the fourth quarter Vintage didn’t give allow the Gauchos (3-5, 0-1 VVAL) to score until there was 1:48 left in the game.
“There was a personal challenge to the five girls put on the floor to try and make that be a zero,” Donohoe added on the stingy defense. “So, again they responded to it and they did down and he (Casa Grande coach Dan Sack) called enough timeouts to where we got rest and we were able to stick with the group that was getting it done for an extended period of time, and that’s always a bonus.”
Vintage was led by Alyssa Andrews. The senior guard has 13 points, made five of her six free throws, and had six rebounds. Nicole Gleeson, Kate Ilsley, and Maya Sapienza all pitched in by adding eight points apiece.
“Well when we start playing better team defense, we start getting out on the run and that gives everybody opportunities,” Donohoe said. “At halftime we made a couple of adjustments and, you know, as usual we committed ourselves to to the effort it’s going to take on the defensive end to win the game. Ultimately, when we’re playing good defense we’re a tough matchup for any team, and we were play exceptional defense tonight, in the second half in particular.”
Another thing the Crushers did well on the night was making their free throws. As a team they made 8 of their 13 shots from the line, but all their misses came in the first half.
“Yeah, that’s a big improvement,” Donohoe explained of his teams growth free throw shooting this season. “We’ve taken it personal to get work out on your own time. There’s just not enough time in a practice plan to have everybody shoot enough free throws to get better at it, so obviously they’re doing work on their own.”
The Crushers will continue league play on Thursday when they head up highway 29 to face American Canyon.
