Vintage wins nail-biter over Justin-Siena, clinches second straight league title
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Goal complete.
Coming into the season the Vintage girls basketball made a goal to win the Vine Valley Athletic League title.
With Monday night’s 49-46 victory over Justin-Siena they completed their goal.
The programs has also won back-to-back league titles for the first time in the school’s history.
“Well, if you look over there at the wall there’s never been back-to-back champions,” Vintage coach Joe Donohoe said happily. “There’s only been (19)83 and (19)85 and then 2018 and 2019 now side by side, so I’m very proud. Obviously, we started talking about this goal at the beginning of the summer.”
In the end the game came down to execution and a few rolls that went one way, when it could’ve easily gone another.
“Man, offensive rebounds for them I thought and two late shots for us that I thought were down that didn’t go in,” Justin-Siena coach Andy Bettencourt said of what was the difference in the contest. “But give credit to Vintage, they’re the league champion for a reason. They’re a heck of a team, and they made some plays when they needed to.”
“Definitely being there before,” Donohoe said of what the difference was. “We’ve played several games like this, so they don’t get too rattled at the end. They believe in themselves and that was anybody’s game. We got some key rebounds at the end, and I think overall we just stuck with it and that Justin team gave us all we could handle and we somehow came out on top again.”
The Braves (13-13 overall, 5-7 VVAL) were led by senior Ashlee Whittemore who had 18 points and five rebounds.
Justin-Siena also got a solid effort from freshman forward Isabella Wright, as she had a double-double on the night. She had 15 points and 13 rebounds.
“Bella’s been awesome,” Bettencourt explained of the freshman. “She’s been our second leading scorer during league, she’s actually our second leading scorer on the season, and she just keeps getting better and better.”
As for Vintage (19-6, 11-1 VVAL) they were also led by their senior guard. Alyssa Andrews had 21 points and four rebounds, Kate Ilsley added 12 points and 12 rebounds, also a double-double effort.
The VVAL tournament will begin on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. The matchups are all rematches of Monday’s game, which means Justin-Siena will visit Vintage and Napa will visit Casa Grande.
“These two teams know each other so well there’s no advantage or disadvantage,” Bettencourt said of facing Vintage again on Wednesday night. “We’re just going to come back here on Wednesday and we’ll see what happens.”
“Obviously, they gave us all we could handle tonight, so we gotta clean up several things including figuring out how to stop the freshman post player (Wright). She’s going to be a force to be reckoned with for the next few years in this league. Bella Wright’s a good player,” Donohoe said of the challenges of facing Justin-Siena again. “But I got good players to, so I think we’ll have a little better game plan.”
