Napa Valley College men fight back from double-digit deficit, but come up just short against Contra Costa
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Basketball, just like any other sport is a game of inches.
The Napa Valley College men’s basketball team found that out the hard way as they dropped a heartbreaker to Contra Costa, 69-66.
With 5.3 seconds left the Storm executed their in bounds play, but as the buzzer rang Braxton Adderly’s shot hit the backboard, then hung on the front of the rim for what felt like an eternity before rimming out.
“I would’ve liked Braxton to pull the trigger on it right when he got it because I think he was better off coming to his right shoulder that way as a lefty,” Napa Valley College coach Steve Ball said of the games final play. “But actually after that when he shot I was hoping he’d get fouled, but for him to throw up a right-hander, I had flashbacks of when he threw (up) that half-court one against Merritt (December 20th). We executed it (the play) very well. We got the shot, one of the guys that we wanted to shoot the three shooting a three, and it just rimmed out.”
“That’s exactly what he (Ball) drew up,” Napa Valley College sophomore guard Malcom Bracy said. “The crazy part about it is Braxton’s really left-handed, but he shot it right-handed and before the game today we were just messing around and he was shooting right-handed shots, and he almost tied it up for us to go into overtime. But you know we all thought it was going in, it just rattled out.”
But for Napa Valley (5-20, 3-10 Bay Valley Conference) they trailed by 12 points during the second half, so to fight back and even get the game tied is definitely something to be happy about.
“We picked up on the defensive end,” Bracy explained as to how his team was able to fight back. “The coaches said in the locker room the they scored like one field goal in the last nine minutes, so we just really picked it up defensively, started talking, and just getting stops.”
In the first half NVC jumped out to a 13-8 lead, with a starting lineup that wasn’t their normal starters.
“I think they were hungry and it pays to be hungry and they executed defensively especially I thought,” Ball said. “Malcom and Tylor (Gerrard) really carried us when that group was on the floor.”
“It seems like a lot of our games we usually start off good,” Bracy said of the fast start. “We have problems keeping it up for the full forty minutes, but usually whatever lineup’s out there, we usually just pick it up from the start.”
However, in the first half the Storm also had some defense lapses, which allowed Contra Costa (12-14, 8-6 BVC) to overtake them and go into halftime up by six.
“We were a step slow on a lot of things, so that leaves some gaps for rebounds, and also a lot of deep penetration they got,” Ball said of how the Comets were able to gain the lead and pull away. “We need to clean that up a little bit.”
NVC once again had three double-digit scorers on the night. Adderly led the way with 14 points and two rebounds. Bracy had 13 points and two rebounds, and Saleem Ali-Musa added 11 points and 10 rebounds.
Free throwing is a double-edge sword, and on the night the Storm made 11 of their 14 shots from the stripe.
Napa Valley will be back in action on Friday night when they head to Marysville for a matchup with BVC leading Yuba. The game will tip at 6 p.m.
