Justin-Siena makes shots down the stretch to beat Vintage
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
In basketball, it’s important to make shots. It’s literally the point of the game. So when a team makes shots, it can propel them to victory.
In Wednesday night’s Vine Valley Athletic League matchup, that’s what the Justin-Siena girls basketball team did well to beat their local rival 46-35.
As usual, when the two teams meet up, the game was tight. But the Braves (11-8 overall, 4-2 VVAL) pulled away in the second half thanks to a big second quarter. In that quarter, they 14-6 to gain separation.
They put the game away in the second half by once again outpacing the Crushers (11-10, 3-4 VVAL) 24-22.
“I just thought we continued to make shots,” Justin-Siena head coach Andy Bettencourt said. “We knew they were going to make a run. They have good players over there. We knew they’d start coming back and luckily when they did come back our kids were able to respond by making a shot and making a play.”
Vintage head coach Joe Donohoe also agreed that the game came down to making shots.
“They made shots, they made some timely shots,” he explained. “I thought our effort and our energy was fantastic. I got a great group of kids that are gonna fight for it, as you saw all the way to the end. They made some shots, and I’m sure that rebounding was a pretty big differential tonight.”
The win is also the first win the Braves as the visitors against Vintage in the four-year existence of the VVAL.
“I was just really happy for our kids,” Bettencourt added. “We have a lot of three and four-year varsity players who haven’t experienced success in this gym and to get that win was nice. For us, our goal is to get better every single day. Our goal is to take it one day at a time and you know what we’ll consider today a win and now we got to move on and get ready for the next one.”
Justin-Siena was led by a trio of double-digit scorers in the game. Leading the way was Richardson who finished with a game and career-high 13 points. The senior forward did most of her damage in the second half when she scored 9 points, She also made 1 of 3 free throws. She also grabbed four rebounds.
“Honestly, I think I owe that to all my teammates just finding those open spots and working the ball around and just getting the passes,” Richardson said. “But not only working the ball around in the offense and making sure that we had a good play going on, and that’s all my teammates, just assist in getting them there.”
Mary Heun and Jordan Washington both finished with 10 points. Huen grabbed 3 rebounds and did most of her damage in the first half where she scored 9 points. The junior guard also converted 1 of 2 free throws. Meanwhile, Washington scored 9 points in the second half and brought in 5 rebounds. She also made 2 of 6 shots from the line.
“I think it’s really important because it shows just how much well we work together and how much it really is a team sport and how it’s not just one player,” Richardson said of the even scoring. “ It’s five players on the court at a time, but also five players on the bench for us, we had 10 kids, and it’s like, the kids who maybe don’t play as much or the kids who play like, it doesn’t matter.”
Charmaine Griffin added 6 points and 5 rebounds, Megha Jackson and Bella Balmaceda added 3 points and 2 rebounds, and Isabella Wright made a free-throw and secured 4 rebounds.
The Crushers were led by Lizzie Qui. The junior guard finished with a team-high 12 points and grabbed 5 rebounds.
Katy Gibbs was the team’s second-highest scorer with 7 points and a rebound. Kayla Cleveland finished with 6 points and a rebound. Liv Hedberg scored 4 points and grabbed 2 rebounds. Gianna McDaniel scored 3 points.
Both teams will be back in action on Saturday night at 5:30 PM. Vintage will once again be at home when they face Petaluma. As for Justin-Siena, it’ll be another local matchup when they visit Napa High.
In the previous meetings, Vintage beat Petaluma 44-33 on January 10th, and Justin-Siena beat Napa 38-28 on January 17th.
