Napa gains huge first half advantage, cruises past Benicia
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Don Lex (LuckyDuckImages.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
The Napa High girls basketball team did a lot of things well on Wednesday night’s 62-23 victory against Benicia.
But one of them was helping and rotating on defense.
“I thought our defense was up tempo tonight, we were ready to trap and rotate, so that was the best part of our game,” Napa coach Darci Ward said of the things her team did well in the contest.
Another thing that helped them defensively was the usage of the full-court press.
“We’ve been working on it a lot,” Ward explained of the press. “So it looked good.”
Then of course, there’s the fact that the Grizzlies (9-6) have been without senior point guard Jane Mcloughlin for most of the season, which has forced them to play more as a team without her.
According to Ward this was the first game they played as a complete unit since Mcloughlin git injured.
“This was our first time that we’ve really had team unity,” she continued. “We’ve been struggling with that for a while, so I think tonight was the first game from losing her that we’ve come back and really played together.”
Overall on the night the Grizzlies were led by sophomore guard Maizy Armstrong-Brown who had 15 points and six rebounds.
Carly Johnson added 11 points and six rebounds for Napa. Faith Bartlett and Anna Ghisletta each added eight points as well.
The Grizzlies will complete the back end of a back-to-back on Thursday when they visit Justin-Siena at 7 p.m.
“Yeah, it’ll be really fun,” Ward said of the matchup with Justin-Siena. “I love playing them. It’s always a good matchup, so I expect it’ll be a fun, good game.”
