Napa Valley College men play best first half of season in rout of Alameda
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
The rain in the weather forecast didn’t come till a little later, but inside Napa Valley College’s Storm Gym the men’s basketball team was making it rain.
With their 81-63 victory over the College of Alameda the Storm officially have a winning streak, by virtue of winning back-to-back games this week.
“The last two games we’ve played really well,” Napa Valley College coach Steve Ball said. “Actually, the last half of the Merritt game (January 20th) we played really well too. So, we’re trending upward, we just need to keep grind and hopefully we can make two into three.”
The Storm also played their best first half of the season according to Ball.
“That’s definitely the best offensive first half that we’ve played this season,” he explained. “We payed attention to detail, we made the extra pass, we really shared the basketball, and we stayed on script also.”
Napa Valley (5-18 overall, 3-8 Bay Valley Conference) went into the halftime break with a hefty 32-point edge because of the fact that two of their guards had a double-digit amount of points. Tomas Gomez-Espana had 12 points, all of which came on shots from beyond the arc, while Malcolm Bracy also had 12 in the first half on a variety of different shots from the field.
“We were just executing well, moving the ball, we were getting open shots because we weren’t being selfish,” Gomez-Espana said as to what was going so well for his team in the first half.
Gomez-Espana was so hot it was reminiscent of how Klay Thompson gets when he’s in his groove. Overall, he ended the night with 16 points and three rebounds.
“He can do that. He can do that for sure,” Ball said of how Gomez-Espana can catch fire. “He’s got to feel confident that he knows what’s going on.”
It also helps to have big men like Saleem Ali-Musa, Oscar Frank, and David Skeete who all have the ability to score a lot of points from inside the key.
“Saleem’s been a beast in conference play, so he’s been very helpful,” Ball said. “I tell the guards sometimes it becomes a black hole situation where the ball goes in and never comes out. But, the more times we throw it in, the more times it’ll come out. So, if you only see the ball in the post three times a game, of course you’re going to shoot those three shots, but if you get the ball seven, ten times you’re going to get exhausted if you shoot every single one of them, so you can start sharing the ball a little bit more. The more we start to feed them, the more they share it.”
With Napa starting to win they’ll look to be a spoiler in BVC play, as they’d be a bad loss for anyone looking to make the California Community College Athletic Association playoffs.
“Coach Carson’s (Carattini) got us being the spoiler this year,” Ball said of the possibility of handing someone a bad loss. “These wins may not make our season, but they’ll definitely ruin somebody else’s. So, that’s our goal every night out.”
The Storm will be back in action on Wednesday when they head Ukiah to face Mendocino. The game will start at 6 p.m.
