Northgate’s on-ball pressure too much for Vintage to handle in Wine Valley tournament opener
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
The 2019 Wine Valley tournament has plenty of talented teams in it this year.
So, that only means that there’s very little margin for error when you’re facing teams that are talented.
That was the case for the Vintage boys’ basketball team in their 46-35 loss to Northgate-Walnut Creek in the opening game of the tournament.
From the start in this one, it appeared as though the Crushers (3-1) were overmatched. A big reason for that was the on-ball pressure that Northgate (1-2) applied.
“At the beginning, they came out and punched us in the mouth,” Vintage coach Ben Gongora said. “And they showed us on-ball pressure, unlike anything we’ve seen in the first four games. We just hadn’t seen that type of on-ball pressure and we’re not comfortable with being uncomfortable yet.”
Despite being pressured throughout the game, Vintage was able to keep the deficit inside of ten points for the majority of the game, but they couldn’t ever get over the hole.
The thing that kept the Crushers in the shouting distance was the use of their zone defense, which slowed down the pace and allowed them to find their footing on the offensive side.
“They really eviscerated us in their man offense,” Gongora explained. “We didn’t have an answer for it. So (assistant) coach Brett Wedding and I said ‘hey let’s go to a zone’. ‘Let’s see if we can at least stop the bleeding or slow them down. Let’s see how well they run their zone offense.’ Typically a really well-executed man offensive team isn’t very good zone offensively and vice versa.”
It also didn’t help that Vintage’s main scorers didn’t have their best games. None the less, Blake Murray still had a solid day by leading the Crushers with 14 points and four rebounds. Imani Lopez also scored nine points and had three rebounds.
But, the more glaring problem was the fact Vintage went 10-of-21 from the free-throw line.
“We really struggled at the free-throw line, which again is frustrating,” Gongora added. “It’s so frustrating because I have a certain way I want them to shoot them and guys are giving resistance, but they’re not getting results.”
Things won’t get any easier for Vintage as they’ll face the loser of the Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa vs Redwood-Larkspur loser on Friday at 5 p.m.
“It doesn’t get any easier because we played the loser of Cardinal Newman-Redwood,” Gongora pointed out. “I told the kids ‘this is what we want.’ You know, ultimately, our whole goal for everything is to get ready for league. So, we don’t want cupcakes. We don’t want to blow anybody out in a tournament by 30 points. We want to be challenged, we need to be challenged.”
