Vintage wins defensive battle over Justin-Siena
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
The Vintage girls basketball team remained undefeated in league play after a tough 33-18 road win over Justin-Siena.
The Braves (10-9 overall, 3-3 Vine Valley Athletic League) were without their do-it-all point guard and leader Ashlee Whittemore.
“I’m very proud of our kids for four quarters tonight,” Justin-Siena coach Andrew Bettencourt said of his teams performance. “Obviously we didn’t finish on the right end of the scoreboard, but our kids gave everything they had, executed a game plan beautifully, and we just ran into a pretty good team and we couldn’t keep up with them.”
Vintage (14-5, 6-0 VVAL) relied heavily on their defense, which was ultimately how they gained their double-digit advantage.
“Defended,” Vintage coach Joe Donohoe said of what his team did well. “We defended well. Yeah, 18 points, so we defend. We didn’t look too good offensively, we missed a lot of shots, and we were rushing shots and not moving the ball and we were in too big of a hurry in the first half to just take the first available open look and that’s usually not the best look, but we figured out a way to inch a little bit ahead, a little bit ahead, a little bit ahead and then everybody got to play that was healthy, so that’s good.”
“They turned up their defense a little bit,” Bettencourt explained. “And we just honestly couldn’t make shots. At the varsity level if you hold a team to 33 points you’re usually doing pretty well. We couldn’t make enough shots.”
Another thing that helped the Crushers out was the fact that they outrebounded Justin-Siena throughout the game.
“There’s usually a couple of words on the board and one of the biggest letters today was rebound,” Donohoe explained of his teams rebounding. “We’re trying to get better every game.”
On the night Vintage was led by senior guard/forward Nicole Gleeson who had 13 points and three rebounds. Alyssa Andrews added 11 points and six rebounds.
Justin-Siena was led by freshman forward Isabella Wright who had eight points and eight rebounds. Ella Thatcher added four points, while Lexi Rosenbrand and Karli Wells each added three to round out the scoring.
Both teams will be back in action on Thursday at 7 p.m. Vintage will travel over to Petaluma to face Casa Grande, while Justin-Siena will head to southern Napa County for a matchup with American Canyon. On December 18th Vintage beat Casa Grande 40-26, and Justin-Siena beat American Canyon 48-29.
