Vintage’s strong effort not enough as they come up just short against Cardinal Newman
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Sometimes the breaks just don’t go your way.
Similarly, there’s always things that could’ve been done differently in order to change the outcome of the game.
Both were true for the Vintage boys’ basketball team in their heartbreaking 51-48 loss to Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa on Friday night in the Wine Valley tournament.
It was also a pretty good bounce-back performance for tie Crushers (3-2) following a rough game against Northgate on Thursday in their opener.
“I’m so proud of them that they didn’t have a pity party,” Vintage coach Ben Gongora said. “You know, I was curious to see how are they going to show up? Are they going to show up feeling sorry for themselves? Are they going to say ’hey, let’s roll up the sleeves and let’s go try to throw a haymaker to our opponent.’ Who cares if they’re Cardinal Newman with Tom Bonfigli, one of the all-time winningest high school coaches in the state. We played well enough to win today. But that’s not how it’s determined.”
The game ended up being a nice bounce-back for the Vintage as they held a two-point edge after a quarter and never trailed by more than five points the whole game.
It was even a coming-out party for senior guard Ethan Hemmerlin. He ended the night with 15 points and two rebounds.
“Ethan did step up and I’m really proud of the effort,” Gongora said of the senior. “ I feel bad that I couldn’t give them more minutes for rest because he basically didn’t come out. I think he set out maybe two minutes if that. But he did a really good job not only on the offensive end but more importantly on the defensive end. He had a couple of breakaways because we got pick-sixes, as I call them or steals.”
Imani Lopez also dropped 15 points and had two rebounds as well. The reason there were two Crushers with 15 points apiece was thanks to their ball movement on offense.
“We made a strategic adjustment that seemed to work out and I think that’s the way we’re going to go with it for now on,” Gongora said. “We’re still working things out. We’re still working out our rotation. We’re still working out some of our offensive sets.”
Another thing that kept Vintage in the game was the use of their full-court zone press.
“It’s complex, and we spend time on it and it’s helped us many, many times,” Gongora explained. “But we’ve got to be able to come down and execute on the offensive end. So, that’s how we’re going to score a lot of our points and transition defense inspires offense. So, I’m really proud of that.”
Yet, the main thing that continued to hound the Crushers was their free-throw shooting. They ended the night 7-for-14, which could’ve changed a lot of things in a tight game like this one.
The loss means Vintage will play in the seventh-place game against Santa Rosa at 10 a.m. on Saturday. Just last Tuesday, Santa Rosa beat Napa 57-55. The Crushers will also host Santa Rosa on January 20th.
