Vintage grinds through foul trouble, free throw issues in victory over Sonoma Valley to stay atop VVAL
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Big Game is always such a game with so much energy. However, the game afterwards there can be a massive let down.
That was the case for the Vintage girls basketball team on Thursday as they beat Sonoma Valley, 39-29, following their Big Game win on Tuesday night.
After starting the game on a 9-0 run, it was like a balloon’s air was slowly released because Vintage was flat and had a minimal energy level for the majority of the game until the last few minutes of the game.
“Obviously, it looked like a let down,” Vintage coach Joe Donohoe said. “That wasn’t the plan, by any means. When you go 2-for-12 from the free throw line, it probably tells you that we’ve got dead legs. And we played really hard Tuesday night and we actually practiced really hard yesterday, which was maybe a little too hard. We were still in a pretty spirited mood yesterday, so we worked pretty hard on practice.”
Although it wasn’t pretty Donohoe will still take getting a league win.
“A league win, so that’s what our goal is,” he explained. “Unfortunately tonight the single-digit (defense) strategy affected us as well. But we won by ten points, so we extended when it mattered and that was the last couple minutes of the game.”
Even though the Crushers (12-5 overall, 5-0 Vine Valley Athletic League) could only mustered up 39 points on offense it was still a good night for the defense as they held the Dragons (8-8, 2-2 VVAL) to less than thirty points, which is a real good night for their standards.
“To be honest that’s above our average in league so far,” Donohoe added. “You know if you keep teams under thirty points in varsity basketball, you should have a pretty good chance to win.”
Following a win over Vacaville in early December Donohoe said that every game isn’t going to be cotton candy and slurpees, meaning it won’t be an easy victory.
Well, this was the definition of one of those games.
“Yeah, I would,” Donohoe explained of the saying pertaining to the contest. “I don’t know where that came from, I remember that, but there’s just nights like this in the middle of the season. We’ve been grinding and I give all the credit to the girls for figuring out a way to get it done. That could’ve gone the other way, easily. We had three of our starters with three fouls early in the third quarter, and again I’ll give credit to the subs that went in there, they played great defense. Obviously that scoreboard didn’t light up much, so all the reserves that got playing time including a freshman (Eden Wood), who was up for her first varsity game ever, I though she played very poised and she did great defensively out there. So, yeah I’m happy.”
The Crushers were led by Alyssa Andrews and Kate Ilsley who each had ten points on the night. Ilsley had eight rebounds, while Andrews only had one.
Nicole Gleeson also added nine points and six rebounds, Maya Sapienza had eight points and five rebounds, and Morgan Groves rounded out the scoring with two points and nine rebounds.
Vintage will be back in action on Saturday night at 7 p.m. when they host Bethel-Vallejo in a non-league contest.
However, the Crushers next VVAL game will be on Tuesday, January 15th when they visit Justin-Siena at 7 p.m.
