Napa makes plays late, uses solid defense to beat Justin-Siena
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Don Lex (LuckyDuckImages.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
When the Napa and Justin-Siena girls basketball teams met up it had the feel of a playoff game. Also coming in Napa was looking for revenge after Justin-Siena beat them 51-40 on January 3rd.
Both teams came in with near identical records in league, so the winner of the game would have the upper hand toward securing a spot in the Vine Valley Athletic League tournament at the conclusion of the regular season.
So, when Napa came away with the 51-45 victory it’s safe to say that they were pretty ecstatic about it.
“I’m so proud of these girls,” Napa coach Darci Ward said. “I think for us to be in a deficit at halftime and to come out and play the way we did at the end, I couldn’t be more proud, honestly. They played with all their heart and soul and I’m really excited.”
“First of all give credit to Napa. We knew this was going to be tough coming into their place,” Justin-Siena coach Andy Bettencourt said. “They’re well-coached, they’ve got some good players over there, and at the end of the day they made shots down the stretch and that’s where they won the game. Their pressure throughout the game caused a lot of problems for us, unfortunately, and they were able to turn those into points, so you know a good game between two good teams and they just made a few more plays than we did.”
Throughout the first half the Grizzlies (13-9 overall, 4-4 VVAL) couldn’t get in a rhythm shooting, but they stayed in the game because of their full-court pressure they applied on the Braves (12-11, 4-5 VVAL).
“Yeah, not just the first half it gave us fits throughout the game,” Bettencourt said. “That’s because they’re in good spots and they pressure, and they get up and they’re physical and we just at times did not handle it well throughout the game.”
However, to begin the second half Napa went on an 8-2 run, all while finding easy points inside the key.
“Well shoot we didn’t even take a shot in the key in the first half,” Ward said sarcastically. “No, it’s good. That was our focus, that we wanted to get the ball inside more and that we wanted to work our in-out game a little bit, and they did it.”
Another thing Napa did pretty well in this contest was make it harder for Justin-Siena senior guard Ashlee Whittemore to score. Even though they slowed Whittemore down a bit she still ended the night as the game’s leading scorer with 17 points all while bringing in three rebounds.
“Ashlee finds a way to get her points in a game and that’s a credit to her finding her spots,” Bettencourt said of Whittemore still ending the night as the leading scorer. “And they obviously focused on her strongly, which is a smart decision. So, unfortunately, we just couldn’t get enough points to win.”
“I don’t know how she finished the game. I know she had eight (points) in the first half,” Ward explained of stopping Whittemore. “I thought we did a good job, I mean she’s a really good player. I mean she is a phenomenal offensive player I really believe that, so yeah she’s tough to guard. I thought we did a good job. The moments we lost her was when she scored, but we really tried the whole time to stay with her. We put different people on her, we tried to have high, early help on her, so I thought overall we did a good job.”
Napa also had three double-digit scorers, which was key in getting the victory. Carly Johnson led the Grizzlies with 15 points and three rebounds, Anna Ghisletta added 13 points and two rebounds, and Siena Young had 11 points and five rebounds.“It’s very good for us,” Ward explained. “That’s what we need to do to win. We need to be able to contain players, which is what we were trying to do with Ashlee, and then we need to be able to score.”
Both teams will return to the floor on Saturday night at 7 p.m. Justin-Siena will host Sonoma Valley, while Napa will visit Vintage for the final Big Game of the regular season. In Justin-Siena’s first matchup with Sonoma Valley on January 8th they lost 37-31. As for Napa they were on the short end of a 47-28 score in the first Big Game, which was also on January 8th.
