Napa Valley College men drop heart breaker to Solano
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Wins aren’t easy to get in college basketball.
The Napa Valley College men’s basketball team found that out in a hard way on Wednesday night as they lost 61-58 to Solano.
With only 9.5 seconds left in the game Solano hit a three-pointer that felt like a dagger in the heart of the Storm (3-18 overall, 1-7 Bay Valley Conference). Following three Napa Valley called a timeout, but when they came out of the time out they weren’t able to get a basket to retake the lead. To make matters worse, David Skeete picked up a technical foul after he intentionally fouled a Solano player. As a result, Solano nailed the two technical free-throws and missed the front end of a 1-and-1 to end the game.
“I thought we got three quarters of the way through what we wanted to run right there,” Napa Valley College head coach Carson Carattini explained. “There was an option there at the top of the key for Oscar (Frank). He made a read, he got into traffic, it looked like he may or may not have gotten tied up, but we’ve just got to recognize what we’re running, recognize our strengths, play together as a group rather than at time trying to take it upon ourselves to make a play. So, if we do that we’re a tough team to guard and you saw them have to go to some zone just to get us out of our offense for a while.”
“Well, I felt a hard hit on my arm actually,” Napa Valley College freshman forward Oscar Frank recalled of the game’s final sequence. “I thought a foul should’ve been called, but it didn’t (happen). ‘You’ve got to move on, next play’ is what I told my teammates with 1.6 left on the clock. We’ve just got to keep pressing forward, keep moving forward, so even if something goes bad you’ve got to bounce back, and that’s what we need to do next game.”
Even though they lost Napa Valley had lots of positive things happen in the substantial amount of time that they led.“We worked on a couple things in practice this week in terms of slowing down the opposition and allowing ourselves to get out in transition, maybe make some things easier for us on the offensive end. I thought at times we did that really well,” Carattini said of what he thought went well for NVC. “Defensively, I thought we slowed down their break and we were able to find our matchups and do a good job on our scouting report, so that was a positive thing from tonight.”
On the night NVC was led by Frank who had 12 points and 12 rebounds.
“He was being aggressive in the things that he knows he’s capable of doing,” Carattini said of Frank’s strong effort. “Being a physical presence on the glass obviously, and then he’s a big, strong body, so if he can get to the rim he’s going to have a high percentage of finishing, and it’s real hard to stay in front of him so we keep encouraging him to be aggressive and to be confident with his game.”
“I think early the guards on my team did a good job helping by getting to the paint and then dumping down for the passes to help like assist and get me to the rim,” Frank said of how he had a solid game. “So, that’s where I just had to finish and do the easy work. They did the hard work, I just had to do the easy work.”
Other key contributors were Saleem Ali-Musa and Braxton Adderly as both of them had ten points.
Ali-Musa got most all of his points in the first half. He ended the night with a total of six rebounds.
“Saleem was going good early,” Carattini said of Ali-Musa. “Their big (man) got into foul trouble and we were able to take advantage of that matchup. Unfortunately, he got into foul trouble on a couple cheap ones that we’ve got to try to stay away from, and that kind of limited him in the second half. It kind of knocked him out of rhythm and he wasn’t able to finish out the game, obviously.”
As for Adderly, he got hot in the second half. The guard also grabbed five rebounds in the game.
“Braxton, we always encourage him to be aggressive,” Carattini said of the guard. “He’s a great basketball player. He has the ability to score, even when his jump shot isn’t falling. He shoots 85, 90% from the free throw line and he finishes well around the rim, so just encouraging him to continue to be aggressive and look for his shot and he can make things happen for us.”
Napa Valley will be back in action on Friday night at 6 p.m. when they host Merritt-Oakland.
