Vintage pulls away in second half to beat Justin-Siena, move onto VVAL championship game
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Every good play has three acts.
Well, following their Monday night meeting, the Justin-Siena and Vintage girls basketball teams met for the third time on the season.
However, the result was the same as the previous two meetings as Vintage came away with a 43-30 win in the semifinal round of the Vine Valley Athletic League tournament.
“They’re a tough out for us,” Vintage coach Joe Donohoe said of facing their Trower rival for a third time. “We know each other really well.”
“Vintage is a good team,” Justin-Siena coach Andy Bettencourt said. “We knew that coming in. I thought we did some really nice things in the first half, and in parts of the second half. But, at the end of the day they made some plays, they made their free throws, and they made a few more plays than we did and just pulled away in the end.”
The teams traded blows in the first half, but in the second half the Crushers (20-6) extended their lead to double-digits due to the fact they were able to score a lot of points off the fast break.
“We haven’t been doing that recently, so it’s good to get that in again,” Vintage senior Nicole Gleeson said of the importance of scoring off the fast break.
Vintage was led by Gleeson on the night. She had 14 points, 10 rebounds, and two blocks on the night.
It also helped that she went 6-for-7 from the free throw line, especially after having a rough night from the free throw line in Monday’s game.
“I don’t know what got into me,” Gleeson explained. “I critiqued my shooting yesterday at practice with my free throws, so thankfully that helped because that was getting a little embarrassing.”
Alyssa Andrews added 11 points and three rebounds for Vintage.
As for the Braves (13-14), they were led by senior guard Ashlee Whittemore. She had 18 points and three rebounds.
“She made tough shot after tough shot,” Donohoe explained of Whittemore’s effort on the night. “We put in a bit of a little bit of a defense yesterday where we double teamed her everywhere, and I didn’t know if it was going to be a hot mess or if we’d do alright with it and we did fairly well with it. It slowed her down a little bit, but she’s a tremendous player.”
With the win Vintage will move on to the VVAL title game on Friday at 5:30 p.m. at American Canyon High School where they’ll face Casa Grande of Petaluma, while Justin-Siena will wait till Sunday to find out their fate in the CIF North Coast Section Division IV playoffs. Vintage and Casa Grande split their two meeting this season, as Vintage won the first meeting 40-26 on December 18th and lost 55-42 on January 17th.
