Laney’s fast and physical full-court press slows Napa Valley down early in season finale
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Every year, the Laney College women’s basketball team is one of, if not the team to beat in the Bay Valley Conference.
Some would even call them the standard. If that’s the case, the Napa Valley College women’s basketball team deserves some major respect after giving the Eagles (21-5, 15-0 BVC) everything they could handle when they dropped a close 63-56 game against them on Wednesday night.
The Storm finished their first season of women’s basketball in three years with an overall record of 12-16 and an 8-8 record in Bay Valley Conference play. Their season finale on Friday at College of Marin was canceled due to Marin having folded its season. That is good enough for fourth-place in the final BVC standings.
It was something head coach Paul DeBolt was happy to see from his young team this season.
“It was just a good vibe on this team, and they grew together as the season went on. I think that has a lot to do with it,” he explained. “But also just the fact that we had something to prove. Napa has not been a very successful women’s basketball program lately. So we want to prove that and we’re going to be better.”
Once again, Napa Valley struggled with their Achilles heal all season long – the first quarter of the game, where they are a slow-starting team. It also didn’t help that Laney’s full-court press messed with things and led to an 18-0 run to the 7:05 mark of the second quarter.
“We knew exactly what was coming,” DeBolt said. “Either you react to it or you don’t. Laney’s a very physical team and they’re fast. It was a combination of things that we tried. We did the best we could to attack it, and eventually, we did. There were holes in it and we scored a lot of points.”
After the first quarter was over, the Storm was able to make things interesting. Things really got interesting in the second half when Napa was able to cut the deficit to three points on multiple occasions.
“I think it shows the heart and the just the growth of this team,” DeBolt said of the fourth quarter. “We’ve always played with passion and heart, but I think the last few games, even the Merritt game where we didn’t play well, we grew up a lot. I think they gained some confidence and it’s just about making shots. We still missed a lot of shots we could’ve made.”
They also had some of their top weapons get going, which helped as well. Leading the way for Napa was Amaree Bennett. The freshman guard finished with a team-high 16 points and grabbed two rebounds. She also caught fire in the second half, where 12 of her points were scored. Bennett also knocked down four shots from three-point land.
Alliyah Fernandez finished with a nice 11 point and two rebounds effort.
In what could’ve been her final basketball game ever, 2019 Vintage graduate Nicole Gleeson finished with 7 points, 11 rebounds, and 3 blocked shots.
Rounding out the scoring for Napa Valley was Addison Alsbury (8 points, 6 rebounds), Mirah Jackson (8 points), Maira Montanez (4 points, 4 rebounds), and Maizy Armstrong-Brown (2 points, 2 rebounds).
Wednesday night was also the last home game, which meant that it was sophomore night. The Storm honored Montanez, Gleeson, and Maleiah Cronin before tipoff.
